


Turbulence

by purplehedgehogskies



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe - Angels & Demons, Alternate Universe - Guardian Angels, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-07-08
Updated: 2016-08-02
Packaged: 2018-02-08 01:33:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 10
Words: 44,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1921686
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/purplehedgehogskies/pseuds/purplehedgehogskies
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Despite being born into the role of a Guardian angel, Katniss was never quite sure of her purpose until her first assignment: Primrose Everdeen. As her charge grows, Katniss devotes herself to loving and protecting Prim at all costs—until the day she can’t. When tragedy strikes and everything falls apart, Katniss finds herself lost in a world she thought she knew, and it seems that only a certain baker’s boy can help her find the light again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

 

**_Chapter One_ **

_"An angel formed of purest love, sent to you from God above..."_

* * *

 

 

Katniss had never really understood the concepts of birth and death. This, of course, was because she wasn’t human. Though she had been born as part of the final generation of angels, it wasn’t as if she could remember it, as it had been practically three hundred years since then. And while humanity had the problem of mortality, of dying, Katniss never truly would.

      Even after countless lessons on the human condition, on the beings she’d eventually be assigned to protect, Katniss couldn’t quite grasp all of it. So perhaps she _wasn’t_ ready when the day came, when her first charge was given, when the youngest of the angels were no longer students but members of the everlasting order meant to keep the world from dying.

     Perhaps she wasn’t ready to have that weight on her shoulders, but it was thrust upon her all the same.

    ****

The lights of the delivery room were being powered only by the hospital’s backup generators, as the electricity had been down for an hour due to the relentless storm outside. Thunder rumbled as the woman screamed, and the sounds merged into a great, painful roar that hurt Katniss’s ears.

     Carol Everdeen was a young widow, having lost her husband the previous September. She was much too young to look so old, Katniss thought, and now on top of her grief she would have a child to raise as well.

     The doctors urged Carol to push, and she complied, or so it seemed. And it went on, with Katniss looking on, standing invisibly off to one side, confused and fascinated at once by the ordeal. Birth, it seemed, wasn’t very pleasant for the mother at all.

    The baby cried just as much when she appeared, and Katniss figured that it wasn’t that pleasant for her either. She had left the warmth of her mother’s womb, where she didn’t have to breathe air, and where there was no light and the loudest sound was the pulsing of blood. This world, this bright, noisy world, was foreign to the child.

     Katniss could relate.

    When Carol held the baby for the first time, however, they had both stopped their wailing. There was a peaceful quiet between them, mother and child, and the woman smiled softly for just a moment. “Primrose,” she said. “I’ll name her Primrose.”

     _Primrose Everdeen._

     Katniss felt her very existence latch onto Primrose’s, and she could feel the baby’s shining soul, so untarnished and pure. It was beautiful. Now, finally, she understood.

     It wasn’t birth that she understood, though she certainly had a better grasp on the subject, and it wasn’t death. No, it was _this_. Being a _Guardian_. She knew not only what she was truly meant to do, but also why she was chosen to do it. Each angel was made for some purpose, and Katniss had been created for this. She could feel it now, that she was made to protect that pure and beautiful soul throughout the entire life of the child, and when the time came, to deliver the girl to Heaven in a state as close as possible to this.   

     Being anchored to the life of a human child had once sounded like a burden, but if it was truly so, it was a glorious burden to bear.

 ****

Carol would never notice that she wasn’t raising her daughter alone. She had little family to speak of, with her parents dead and her in-laws back in New York City. Her maternity leave was over as quickly as it had begun, forcing her to leave baby Primrose with Mrs. Sae, her neighbor from across the hall.

     But when she was home, Prim was left often alone in her nursery. When she was passed out from sheer exhaustion, draped across the couch or with her face pressed into the pillow on _his_ side of the bed despite the fact that it no longer smelled like him, Prim was left to cry.

     The first time Katniss interfered was when Prim was six months old, and when her mother had been given the weekend off and had used it to drink herself into an impenetrable slumber. Usually, Prim’s wails eventually woke her, but that night Carol was down for the count. Katniss didn’t blame her. She had seen glimpses of the woman’s soul through the blue of her eyes—it was dimmed, yearning, and though it was still remarkably _good_ , it was by no means _whole_. Some souls twisted, some souls broke, and Carol Everdeen’s had a hole blown through it.

     Without help, her attempts at mothering would surely fail. Katniss decided then that she wouldn’t be the passive sort of Guardian that simply watched and kept her charge from harm when necessary. She would be proactive, helpful, picking up the slack and making up for Carol’s fumbles instead of simply observing from the sidelines. 

     She materialized where she was standing, visible only to baby Primrose—even if her mother were to wake, she wouldn’t see Katniss there.

     Katniss reached into the crib, where Prim sat, red-faced and covered in tears and snot. She wiped the baby’s face with the sleeve of her sweater, which she’d chosen especially to be soft to the touch, and lifted her up into the air. “Hush, now, I’ve got you,” she said softly, bouncing the baby on her hip and inspecting her to see what was troubling her so.

     She had wet herself.

     Katniss had watched Carol do this enough that she knew how to change a diaper, and she performed the task quickly and skillfully. She even dressed Primrose in a new onesie with ducklings on it and tossed the old one into the laundry hamper. And though Prim’s mother had never thought to sing her a lullaby, Katniss knew that sometimes it was the best way to get babies to sleep.

     “ _Deep in the meadow, under the willow_ ,” she sang as she lay Prim down in her crib, keeping her hand nearby so the baby could clutch at her fingers. “ _A bed of grass, a soft green pillow. Lay down your  head, and close your sleepy eyes, and when again they open, the sun will rise._ ”

     Once her eyes were closed and her grip around Katniss’s finger had loosened, Katniss left Prim’s side and returned to her previous state—invisible, disembodied, watching and waiting until she was needed again.

 ****

If Carol noticed that both she and her daughter were sleeping better, she didn’t let on. And until Prim could sleep entire nights without being tended to, Katniss kept popping in and caring for her when the mother was obtaining her much-needed rest. Nursing, after all, was a demanding profession.

     When Prim was three, she would regularly carry on conversations with Katniss, which puzzled and amused her mother.

     “Who are you talking to?” Carol asked one morning, seeing no one. Katniss, who was sitting right there, giggled and tickled Prim under her arms. Prim, laughing too hard to say something, pointed.

     Carol searched the air, staring right through Katniss to the wall beyond, but she nodded knowingly as if she could sense something was there.

     “What’s your friend’s name, honey?” she asked, playing with Prim’s fine blond hair. “Is it a boy or a girl?”

     “She’s Katniss,” said Prim, but instead it sounded more like _Katniff_. Katniss laughed, and so did Carol.

     “Catnip?” she asked. Prim scowled, turned and looked at Katniss, and then back at her mother. She kept repeating the name, saying it the same way every time because she simply couldn’t form the right sounds, growing more frustrated with each repetition. When she finally screeched and ran off to her room, her patience lost, her mother heaved a heavy sigh.

     A photo of David Everdeen sat on the table beside the sofa, and Carol picked it up, smoothing her thumb lovingly over the image. She smudged the glass, but she didn’t care.

     “I don’t know how I do it without you,” she whispered. Katniss remained, crouched on the floor among Prim’s dolls and alphabet blocks, watching in quiet curiosity. Even if Carol could see her, she wouldn’t be talking to Katniss—after all, she wasn’t raising Prim without Katniss’s help. She was speaking to the photograph.

     It almost didn’t make sense to Katniss, because they both knew that it was just an image. It wasn’t the man himself, nor was it a way to communicate with him. Prayers to the Lord and to angels could be heard from anywhere, but never prayers to a man. David wouldn’t hear her from Heaven, but she spoke to him all the same.

     Belatedly, Katniss realized that it was because she loved him. Carol had loved her husband and had learned to live without him, but sometimes she needed to pretend he was still there, and that he could still be reached. She watched as the woman clutched the photo to her chest and spoke to him as if he could hear, and she thought of how love was meant to be such a beautiful thing. The way Katniss loved Prim was like glowing candlelight, comforting and warm, and the way Carol showed the same kind of love was just as beautiful.

     But suddenly, love seemed to hurt.

     Katniss fled the room at once.

     The love was not what hurt. Love was not what made Carol have moments where she seemed empty and drained, and love was not why she cried at night. It was the death of the one she’d loved that did this to her, and Katniss was frightened by this realization. Katniss had known birth, and love, and hope, but she had not known death. She had not known loss.

     And she was terrified that someday she would.

 ****

Prim grew quickly and beautifully. She was the spitting image of her mother, all golden hair and baby blues. She was incredibly spirited and kind and some days, Katniss was sure that Prim was the true angel of the two of them.

     For the longest time, Prim didn’t really question the fact that she had a Guardian angel tethered to her, following her to school and to the park. She didn’t question the fact that nobody else’s “imaginary friend” helped them conquer the monkey bars on the playground or gave them help on their subtraction problems. She was eight when it occurred to her, while her play table was set for a tea party and Katniss was too big for the chair.

     Her mother asked, “Why isn’t there a chair here?” when she walked in with Prim’s fresh laundry. Katniss looked up from her empty teacup, which she had slowly been pretending to stir. Prim’s favorite doll, Lucy, stared straight ahead.

     “Mommy, Katniss is sitting there,” said Prim, annoyed. “She’s too big for the chair.”

     Prim’s mother looked to the crayon drawings Prim had pinned to the wall over the years. Once, when she’d been told to draw her family for something in class, Prim had drawn herself between her mother and Katniss, holding hands with both of them, and she had drawn her father in a firefighter’s uniform, standing on a cloud. That particular drawing was hanging just above the bed, but most of the others were the same: a small, blond figure holding the hand of a taller, dark haired girl.

     “Right,” Carol said, nodding. “How old is Katniss, anyway?”

     “Three hundred and nine,” was the little girl’s reply, and her mother seemed surprised. But she said nothing, instead retreating back to the living room where she was watching a grown-up television show that Prim wasn’t allowed to see. “Katniss,” Prim said when she had gone. “Are you real?”

     “Yes.”

     “Everybody says you’re imaginary, but you’re _not_.”

     “I know, little duck,” Katniss said, smiling and reaching over the table to ease a strand of hair behind Prim’s ear. “It’s because I’m a special kind of friend. Only you can see me because I make it that way.”

     Prim frowned. “I don’t get it.”

     “Primmy…”

     “They say I’m too old for imaginary friends,” she said. “So why are you pretending to be imaginary, still? Why can’t you just be uninvisible?”

     It was more complicated than that, of course, and Prim wouldn’t understand if she tried to explain it now. Katniss could show herself in a number of ways—visible to everyone, or only to a select few, and she could materialize in whatever clothes she wanted. The big thing, though, was the wings. She hadn’t shown them to Prim yet, because she hadn’t yet explained what she really was.

     “No,” she said. “In fact, I’m going to tell you a secret, okay? It has to be kept a secret, just like I’ll have to be kept a secret from now on. You understand?”

     Prim nodded, and Katniss closed her eyes. She felt a warmth at her back as the wings trembled free of their bonds, spreading out from her back. She shook them out, leaving feathers on the carpet. It felt good to have them out, as she hadn’t felt them in years, and Katniss couldn’t help but grin widely. They were not nearly as impressive as some of the other wings she’d seen, all black and blue and gray instead of pristine white or shimmering gold, but Katniss was proud of the set she’d been given.

     “Oh,” Prim whispered as Katniss folded her wings closer to her body again. “They’re so _pretty_.”

     “Thank you.”

     “You’re a guardian angel, then?” asked Prim. Katniss nodded, glad that her charge had figured it out so quickly. Along with being amenable, Prim was also very bright. “That’s really cool. I bet no one at school has a guardian angel.”

     She frowned. “Prim, you know you can’t tell anyone, right?”

     The little girl nodded, reaching to pat Katniss’s arm reassuringly. “Like you said, you’re a secret now.”

     And she kept her word. The next time she was asked about Katniss, she shook her head and said Katniss wasn’t around anymore. She took down all the pictures she’d drawn, save for the family portrait, and tossed them in the trash. Prim was nothing if not thorough in erasing all evidence of Katniss, including the way she tracked down every feather that had fallen away when the wings had been out and hid them in a box beneath her bed.

     However, Katniss was still present. When Prim was alone, they would play together, and as she got older, playing with dolls turned into painting each other’s nails and tea parties became a distant memory. They sometimes watched movies together, or talked about the boys Prim liked at school, and when Prim was sad Katniss was the only shoulder she wanted to cry on.

     Carol was never concerned, surprisingly. Prim didn’t cultivate many friendships outside Katniss, besides one girl named Posy, a sweet, ambitious girl that repeatedly ran for class president starting in the seventh grade. Katniss often made herself scarce when Prim was in the company of friends or family, and when she was at school, but she was always there in her room. She helped with her homework and let her vent all her feelings, even if she didn’t understand them all, and even if she didn’t have anything interesting to contribute to conversations. Prim was her life, and there was nothing beyond that.

 ****

“We’re starting to look the same age,” said Prim one morning in front of the mirror, applying lip gloss. Katniss was fixing her golden hair into a braid that wrapped into a bun at the back of her head. She looked up and saw her reflection beside Prim’s—they could be the night and the day, as Katniss’s coloring was much darker compared to Prim’s rosy cheeks and crystal blue eyes.

     “I don’t know. I look like I’m in my twenties.”

      “You could actually pass for any age from seventeen to like, twenty-eight,” said Prim. “You have that kind of face. It’s an angel thing, isn’t it?”

     Katniss nodded.

     “Well, you could say you’re my tutor or mentor or something. You could start using the front door instead of just _materializing_ ,” Prim continued. “Sans wings, of course. You can talk to my mom and be seen with me in public and, I don’t know, we could almost be like normal friends.”

     “Prim…” Katniss trailed off. They’d had this talk before—the fact of the matter was that they would never be normal friends, because what they had wasn’t normal. Katniss’s job was to be Prim’s _Guardian_ , not her friend or her mentor.

      “I know,” said Prim with a sigh. She smiled at their reflections before reaching for the bathroom doorknob. “ _Guardian_ , not friend.”

     And then she was gone, headed off to school. Katniss followed, invisibly of course, and she kept thinking about what Prim had said. Prim wanted it so badly, this semblance of normalcy.

     As soon as her charge was safe at school, Katniss flitted off to the Station.

     The Station, as they called it, was located somewhere between the realms of Heaven and Earth. It was like a Super 8 for angels, or a local bar, where they could stop and rest before their next objective and where they could meet up with friends they hadn’t seen in a while.

     Katniss walked in and spotted him right away, sitting in a corner booth with a hood drawn up over his head and his wings at an awkward angle that seemed uncomfortable, but probably wasn’t. Gale was always holding his wings weirdly. When he was young, he had been gawky and awkward, and this was the one aspect of that that had lingered.

     Katniss had always questioned the fact that he’d been born to fight off the dark things that ran rampant on Earth, but now that he’d grown into himself, she could see it. Gale was dark and handsome now, a Warrior angel that wore leather jackets and spent at least a little bit of his free time brooding. She slid into the other side of his booth and raised her hand to call the waitress, ordering a glass of iced tea.

     “You absolutely reek of demon blood,” she said to Gale, and he scowled.

     “You absolutely reek of teenage-girl perfume,” he replied dryly. He uncrossed his arms and leaned over the table, wrapping his huge hands around his small cup of coffee. “How’s Prim? I haven’t seen you since she was twelve and having awkward twelve-year-old problems, whatever those may be.”

     “Well,” said Katniss, shrugging. “She just turned sixteen recently, and she’s just as lovely as ever I suppose. Her grades are stunning, and she’s so kind and giving, though she’s still so young and naïve.” Katniss briefly explained to Gale the idea that Prim had proposed that morning—Katniss pretending to be something she wasn’t for the sake of not having to be a secret anymore. “I don’t know if it’s a good idea.”

     “What’s not a good idea?” chirped a voice from behind her, and the bubbly blonde Madge scooted into the seat beside Katniss. She glanced at Gale and smiled brightly, and Katniss re-explained for her benefit. Madge was the most seasoned of all of them, having traveled all over the world delivering messages from the Lord in the sixteen years since they were all dispatched. Katniss would value her advice.

     “I would say no,” Gale said after she had finished, sipping his coffee. “It’s risky and unconventional.”

     “I think it’s _sweet,_ ” Madge countered. “Katniss’s methods are already unconventional, as she’s practically had a hand in raising the child and has become involved in her life. She offers not only guardianship, but guidance and companionship, Gale, and it seems to be effective!”

     “Thank you,” said Katniss rather proudly. Prim was her first assignment ever, and she was more than a success to be proud of. She was the epitome of all human beauty and Katniss loved her more than anything.

     “It would be good for Primrose, I think, to feel normal,” Madge said. “You should definitely consider it.”

     When Katniss left the Station hours later, after catching up with Madge and Gale over countless glasses of tea and cups of coffee, she had made up her mind.

     Panem City, Virginia only had one Wal-Mart, one hospital, and one bakery/coffee shop, but it had two high schools. Prim was at Jefferson High on the south side of town, which was worse for wear than Collins High School on the north side, but was probably better than the schools she would’ve gone to if her mother had stayed in New York instead of moving back to her hometown. The brick building had minimal maintenance issues, though there were significantly more occurrences of bullying, fighting, and disrespect towards staff members compared to the other school.

     There was one piece of graffiti, spray-painted right onto the front steps, but it had been there since the previous school year and had quickly been accepted as a work of art. Since then, other paintings of the same style had been popping up around town, adding a burst of color to Panem City that wasn’t entirely unwelcome. The mysterious “vandal” had not yet been caught in the act, and the police had all but given up despite the fact that they hardly had anything else to work on.

     Katniss stood there and looked at the painting on the steps, a golden bird with an arrow in its beak, scuffed up from being tread upon. It was impressive even when you didn’t account for the fact that it was painted on concrete steps in the broken up way it was.

     Suddenly, a wave of students washed over the artwork and obscured it as they rushed out the door and down the steps. Katniss craned her neck to look over their heads, hoping to spot Prim somewhere among them.

     She walked out with Posy, distracted by what seemed to be an engaging conversation. Katniss figured they were talking about something they’d learned in class, as they tended to do, and she bounced on her feet and waved, waiting to be noticed.

     “Prim!” she called, hoping her voice would travel over the rumble of sound that the mass of students made in their hurry to get home, or rather, away from the school. As the crowd thinned, Katniss made her way towards the girls, who had lingered beside the steps and were watching the road for Posy’s mother’s car, their ride home. “Hey, Prim.”

      Prim smiled at Katniss and looked away. She didn’t realize that she wasn’t the only one who could see Katniss right now, wearing a pea coat and scarf and gloves when she’d never bothered before. Katniss didn’t really have to dress for the weather, but she had today, for appearance’s sake.

     Posy, however, acknowledged her. “Hi…”

     “Hi,” she said, her breath fogging as it hit the air. Katniss held out her hand. “I’m…Kat, a friend of Prim’s, her mentor, I guess. I go to Collins.”

     That got Prim’s attention. She was shocked first, and then her face lit up in delight.

     “Yeah. Kat’s a senior,” Prim added happily. She was visibly excited, clasping her mitten hands together and hiding her smile behind them, as she always had since she was little. Katniss grinned at her. “She helps me with my homework and is the reason I’m passing religious studies.”

     That much was true, actually.

     “You said you wanted to hang out, Prim?” Katniss said. “We could go to the library and study, or to the craft store—you said you wanted to make that DIY headboard for your room, and we could find the stuff there.”

     Prim nodded energetically, apologized to Posy for the short notice, and latched onto Katniss as they wove their way through the crowd and towards the sidewalk.

     “Thank you, thank you so much for this, oh my gosh,” she gushed, holding onto the back of the unnecessary winter coat, right where Katniss’s wings would be if she had appeared with them. Prim realized this quickly and moved her hand to Katniss’s arm instead. “This is so awesome! And the headboard, oh, it’ll be so cool.”

     They went to the craft store and found the foam, thread, and buttons that Prim needed for her headboard, and after taking forever to decide, Prim picked out a fabric. It was a choice between half of the floral-patterned fabrics that the store had, and Prim had settled on one that was covered in pink and purple daisies. Next door, at the hardware store, they had a guy cut some fiberboard for them. After paying for the supplies with Katniss’s Heaven-issued credit card, they walked back to the apartment, praying it wouldn’t start to snow on them.

      Of course, it did, but only just as they got to the building. Fat, crystalline flakes lodged themselves in their hair and on their bags, and the girls couldn’t help but laugh at each other as they hurried to get inside. It was just like always when they hurried up the three flights of stairs, giggling and bumping into each other all the way up.

     At the apartment however, Katniss had to leave her boots by the door and her coat on a hook. Again, for appearance’s sake. She ushered Prim towards the bedroom, laughing when her charge dropped one of the shopping bags and when she herself bumped into the couch with the board. They got to work right away, using a tutorial from the internet.

     “Do you have homework?” Katniss asked partway through, when they were covering the buttons with the scrap fabric. Prim paused and looked up as if suddenly realizing she’d forgotten something huge, though Katniss could see right through it. Prim was a terrible actress.

     “No, just some worksheets that are already half done,” she said after dropping the act. Katniss smiled at her proudly, because that meant that during study hall instead of reading or passing notes, she’d worked, which was kind of work ethic that a Guardian _should_ be proud of.

     With two sets of hands working on it, the headboard was done quickly and hung up on the wall by the time Mrs. Everdeen got home from her shift at the hospital. She usually started dinner right away after her arrival, but she must’ve heard them talking, because she swung by Prim’s room first instead.

     “Who’s your friend, Prim?” she asked, upon seeing Katniss sprawled across the covers, flipping through an issue of National Geographic.

     “Kat,” Prim said, looking up from her homework. Then, she gestured to the headboard. “Look, she helped me with this. I’ve wanted to do it for ages now.”

     “That’s very nice,” Carol Everdeen said, smiling, and then she looked at Katniss. “Are you staying for dinner, dear?”

    Katniss nodded, and she happily ate with them, “leaving” after dessert but appearing in Prim’s bedroom just as the front door closed behind her. Prim went to sleep that night looking happier than she had the night before, though Katniss hadn’t known that was possible because Prim was almost always happy. She watched over the girl as she slept soundly, and she was there in the morning to braid her hair.

 ****

Katniss continued to show up like this, picking Prim up after school and taking her places—the library, the museum, and one day, to the bakery. Prim had been dying to go there and make Katniss try one of the addictive cheese buns, and she had finally gotten her wish. The day was sunny and warm for February, and the icicles hanging from the bakery roof were dripping onto the pavement below as they walked in.

     “I’ve never had coffee,” Katniss said to Prim as they entered and the aroma filled their noses, a smell Katniss recognized from the countless mornings she’d stood in the kitchen and watch Mrs. Everdeen get ready for work.

     “You’ll like it. It’s bitter, like you,” said Prim.

     “Hey!”

     Primrose laughed and went to order, and Katniss found a table, a booth by the window on one side of the bakery, which was located on the corner of Main Street and Undersee Avenue. She situated herself, shucking off her coat and scarf and balling them up on the bench beside her while she waited for Prim.

     When the girl came over with a plate of steaming pastries, Katniss caught a whiff and dug in right away. They were amazingly warm and savory and so, so delicious. “I would like a hundred of these every day for the rest of your life,” she said around her mouthful, and Prim laughed. “No, the rest of my _eternal_ life.”

     “Let me go get our coffee,” she said, and she came back with actual mugs—hers had whipped cream floating on top and Katniss’s was a rich dark brown color that almost matched the color of her hair, which she had worn loose today, so that it tumbled halfway down her back.

     As it turned out, she didn’t very much like it that way, and she got up to retrieve some sugar and creamer from the counter.

      Prim shouted something after her, something about the bitterness being too much and her being a wimp, though she was one to talk. She had this fancy designer drink that probably tasted _way_ better than what Katniss had been given. Katniss looked over her shoulder to make a face at the girl, something she didn’t realize could lead to the disaster it did.

     In the split second that she wasn’t looking where she was walking, she collided with a boy carrying a tray of cupcakes. The impact didn’t hurt either of them, but the cupcakes tumbled to the floor and landed with a _splat_ , frosting side down on the linoleum.

     She froze. “Oh my, I am so, so sorry,” she said, crouching down to help him pick them up. He crouched beside her, laughing lightly as he loaded the ruined cupcakes back onto the tray.

     “It’s all right,” he said. “It’s not every day I get hit out of nowhere by a beautiful girl.”

     “Um…what?” Katniss looked up. He was grinning at her, his blue eyes glinting.

     “Never mind. Sorry,” he said, blushing slightly and picking up the last of the confections. “I’ll clean up the rest.”

     “You won’t get fired, will you?” Katniss asked, alarmed. The boy laughed brightly, loudly, unabashedly.

     “No. What’s your name?”

     “Katniss.”

     “Peeta.”

     “What?” she spluttered again.

     “Peeta. It’s my name. Weird, I know,” he said. He gestured to the creamer and sugar area by the counter and she realized he’d heard what Prim was saying before the collision. “Go ahead, I’ll fix this. It happens a lot, though it’s usually my brother, because he daydreams too much. Or my _other_ brother, because he’s too busy trying to impress the lads and ladies to look where he’s going.”

     “Oh.”

     “Yeah…”

     Katniss hurried to get her coffee fixings and hurried back to the table, around the white and yellow frosting that was splattered on the floor like an abstract painting. Prim was giggling wildly when she returned, covering her mouth with her hands and wiggling in her seat. Adorable, Katniss thought, and she didn’t even admonish her for laughing. She just stirred in her sugar and creamer until the coffee tasted just right.

     “Peeta Mellark is the TA for my art class,” said Prim when she’d finally composed herself. “He’s really dreamy, isn’t he?”

     “His eyes are beautiful,” Katniss mused. “Startling, really, very bright and very blue. But also, there’s something sad behind them too.”

     Prim frowned. “His mom died a couple years ago. Maybe that’s it.”

     “Maybe,” Katniss said, watching as this mystery of a boy reemerged from the back room with a rag to wipe up the mess. She watched as the barista laughed at him, and she watched as he bent down to clean the frosting up quickly and easily, drying off the spot with another swipe.

     “See how easy that was?” The boy, Peeta, looked up at her. He’d known she was watching, which made heat rise to Katniss’s cheeks. When no one can see you, you don’t ever have to feel embarrassed, so Katniss didn’t know what to do with herself in that moment. Peeta just laughed, blushed a little himself, and walked back to the kitchen to get back to work.

     “Cute,” said Prim, sipping at her drink. “Very, very cute.”   

 

      


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter Two**

" _Never drive faster than your guardian angel can fly..."_

* * *

 

 

There were four reasons that Katniss and Prim kept going to Panem City Bakery—they were there once a week _at least_ —and they all made a whole lot of sense, except for one.

     The first reason was the coffee. There were other places to get coffee in town, and Katniss had tried all of them, but the bakery was the best. She drank it warm, cold, and blended, and she loved it almost always—even their black coffee was better than anyone else’s.

     The second reason, which was arguably even more important than the first, was the cheese buns. They made them fresh, and because they sold so quickly right after school, if Katniss and Prim walked to the bakery slow enough they could get there right as a new batch was put out. They were just about the best thing Katniss had ever tasted, though as an immortal being that didn’t need to eat, she didn’t have extensive experience with food.

      Reason number three was all about the ambiance. The bakery was warm and cozy, always smelling of bread and cake and always with a comfortable atmosphere. Katniss had noticed that so many people in the modern world hurried through their days with a sense of urgency, always wanting to get things done and get places faster. Instant gratification and more time to waste _hurrying_ was what they got from it, but in the bakery, all that seemed to fade away.

     Until Prim had said otherwise, Katniss had thought that was it, and that those three reasons were enough. But apparently not.

      “What’s the fourth reason?” Katniss asked as they made their way through the slush and melting snow to get to the bakery. The end of February was nigh, and soon it would be spring: Prim’s absolute favorite season.

      “The callipygian, herculean _hotness_ of the Mellark boys, of course,” Prim said boldly as they crossed the street to the corner that the bakery was settled upon. They could already see the patrons through the windows, as well as the hulking Capulet Mellark cleaning off tables.

     Prim knew quite a bit about these boys, as if she’d researched them in the same library that she researched usage of nuclear chemistry for an extra credit paper. Truly, it was probably intel gained from the gossip in the various social circles she and Posy had influence in (Posy was, after all, the sophomore class representative on the student council.)

      In her room a few days before, as Katniss had painted her toenails cherry red, Prim had told her everything—from their status as naturally-blond to their sexual exploits. Walden Mellark was the oldest of the three, towering and slightly intimidating because of how asocial he was. Katniss had seen him working the counter at the bakery, staring blankly and repeating orders in the blandest of voices. Capulet, or Cap, was the middle child. He was a man of many sports, but predominantly a star quarterback with awesome grades—he was in for so many full-ride offers that he would have them coming out of his ears. He was a goof, he slept around but was always nice about it, he sometimes volunteered at the local humane society, and he was an involved member of Jefferson High’s Pride Club.  

     Peeta was the baby, a talented artist and a total sweetheart, apparently. He had a small circle of friends and was never seen drinking at parties, even when he showed up to them. Prim reported that he was usually in the back of the bakery for a reason—he was in charge of the cake and cupcake decorating and some of the baking, working alongside his father in the kitchen. He got up early and helped open the bakery, showed up at school with flour or frosting on his clothes and in his hair, and left during his free period at the end of the day to help out even more.

     When Prim and her angel entered the bakery that Friday afternoon, the bell on the door jingled and Cap looked up, grinning when his eyes landed on Katniss. They were brown instead of the blue she’d expected, though he looked like Peeta in almost every other way except those eyes and that ridiculous dimpled smile. He was handsome, for sure, and so were his brothers…but it still confused Katniss that their handsomeness and bulk was a reason to keep making appearances at the bakery.

     “Hello, ladies,” Cap said as he strolled forward, tucking the spray bottle and rag he was holding into a pouch clipped to his belt. “Katherine, right?”

      “No,” Katniss replied. She cocked her head to one side. “Is this some sort of attempt at flirtation? I can assure you, your efforts will be more appreciated elsewhere.”

     Cap burst out laughing, and he didn’t stop as he turned and walked away, towards the kitchen. Katniss turned to Prim, confused. Her charge simply shrugged in response and headed over to the leather chairs near the fireplace on the back wall, their favorite place to sit. Today it was unoccupied, but Prim was quick to claim it just in case.

     Katniss went up to the counter and ordered a cold, blended coffee for each of them, and six cheese buns. She paid with her angel card and joined Prim by the warm fireplace, cheese buns in hand, and they were each almost through one whole pastry before their number was called and Katniss had to run up and get the coffees.

     While they sat there, Prim talking while Katniss listened—today she was talking about the interesting links between music and academic achievement. Cap came back out, talking to someone beyond the door, no longer laughing so loudly though there was still humor in his voice.

     “There’s a hot hipster guy in a booth that I still haven’t talked to,” he was saying, leaning on the kitchen door as if he needed its support. “Though I’m still hurting from your prima donna’s scalding rejection. I could’ve sworn we had something, but…” a muffin was hurled at him, and he caught it before it hit him in the face. He closed the door, winked at Katniss, and took a bite of the muffin.

     She shook her head, rolled her eyes, and continued to listen to Prim, who had switched topics but was still speaking with as much energy and enthusiasm as before, gesturing with her hands and making engaging eye contact. Prim didn’t know yet what she wanted to do—nursing like her mother, botany or horticulture because she loved plants so much, or something with animals, but Katniss rather thought she’d be a good speaker.

     She was, however, biased. She was always interested by what Prim had to say simply because Prim was everything she loved about the world.

     The next day they showed up at the bakery, it was Tuesday. Tuesday meant the blonde barista girl instead of the brunette, and it meant that another pair of regulars was occupying Katniss and Prim’s favorite spot in the corner. When they walked in, the girls went to their second favorite place instead: a booth by the window.

     Prim didn’t have much work to do, so they stayed late and had an extra order of cheese buns instead of dinner. Afterwards, when Cap placed little lava cakes topped with raspberries on their table and handed them each a fork, Katniss was confused. She snapped her head up to look at him, and he grinned.

     “On the house,” he said, smiling. “Trying out a new recipe, figured we needed some customer input—at least that’s what I was told to say.  If I tell you who told me to do this, though, I’ll probably get another muffin thrown at me, so…”

     Cap trailed off and walked away. Katniss watched him, playing with her fork as Prim happily took a large bite of the warm chocolate cake.

      “Mmmm,” she moaned as it filled her mouth. There was chocolate on her chin, and Katniss absentmindedly reached to wipe it up before turning her attention back to the figure that was disappearing behind the kitchen doors. “That’s awesome. What are you…oh. Haven’t you figured that out yet?”

     “Figured what out?” asked Katniss.

     Prim laughed and shook her head. “Wow. Thick-skulled, much? Peeta Mellark thinks you’re a cutie patootie. That’s what you should’ve figured out. I mean, the other day Cap was talking to someone in the back about _his_ prima donna’s rejection. Who works in the back? Peeta.” Prim looked at Katniss as though everything she was saying should have been completely and utterly obvious. “ _Peeta_ threw that muffin at him, and now Peeta did this because he knew you were still here. Plus, he was _way_ flirty when you first met.”

     “All right, sure,” said Katniss. She waved her hand in the air dismissively and they left after finishing their cake. Prim left a thank you note on the table and laughed about not being able to put down Katniss’s number for Peeta’s benefit because Katniss didn’t have a phone.

     At home, she sat with Prim in bed and wondered about Peeta—if he was actually attempting flirtation, why he would even bother, what he thought he saw in her because they’d barely met at all and had barely spoken. Prim was watching her puzzle over it, and she laughed musically and nudged Katniss with her knee.

     “Don’t worry. Even human girls don’t understand, not right away, anyway.”

     She fell asleep shortly after, and Katniss was left to her puzzling and wondering in the dark.

 ****

It was the first Friday of March—too early for springtime blooming, but the feeling was approaching anyway. The days were warming, and Prim was painting flowers in art class. The assignment was technically to paint a rendition of your favorite animated character, but Prim already had—and now, she was painting flowers into Rapunzel’s long golden hair.

     Katniss was spying, sitting on the windowsill behind her charge, unseen by everyone in the classroom but Prim. In one corner, Peeta Mellark was gazing at a canvas of his own, painting whatever he felt like painting because he wasn’t even a student in this class, just an aide. An aide that wasn’t really aiding at the moment, until he had done what he thought was a sufficient amount of painting for the day. When he finished a few more meticulous brushstrokes, he got up and cleaned out his palette and brushes before starting to walk around the room and give pointers.

     When he got to Prim’s side, he smiled at her painting and suggested that she plan on doing something with the background if she wasn’t already thinking about it, because there was a lot of space that needed color.

     “Yeah, thanks, I’ll do that,” she said. “Thank you, Peeta.”

     “Any time. Hey. You’re welcome for the cake the other night, by the way,” he said. He stood near her table but not uncomfortably close, leaning against it and smiling. “How did you know it was me?”

     “Deduction. It was sweet of you,” said Prim, but her smile faltered. “It really confused Katniss though. Weirded her out a little. I guess she’s not used to being…noticed.”

     Peeta looked alarmed. “The last thing I wanted was to make her uncomfortable. I should, um, I should probably not do stuff like that, sorry. I just wanted to, I don’t know, do something for you guys.”

     “It’s okay. She’s just…it’s okay if you think she’s cute and all, but…it’s complicated,” Prim explained. “I don’t know if she’s really uncomfortable about it, but she was _surprised_.”

      He nodded understandingly, asked if she’d keep him posted, and then wandered off to help out another student. Katniss sat down in the chair next to Prim, watching him go. She didn’t say anything—she didn’t admit to being uncomfortable or upset by Peeta’s attention, because she wasn’t. She didn’t say she’d been surprised, because Prim already knew. She just sat there and absorbed the idea of being sought after by a young man, about how impossible she’d thought that once was and how controversial it would be in Heaven’s eyes.

      Truly, Katniss didn’t know what to think. She didn’t know how it made her feel, because it was so odd, so foreign to her that she didn’t even know what she was _supposed_ to feel.

     When they stayed late that night at the bakery, Peeta came out of the kitchen to write tomorrow’s date and tomorrow’s special on the chalkboard that hung above the counter. He kept glancing at her and looking away quickly, and at one point he almost lost his footing and fell off of his stepstool. The barista swatted him with a rag and went on cleaning.

     Because it wasn’t a school night, Katniss and Prim stayed until the bakery closed at eight. Prim’s mother was already on her way to pick the both of them up (they had said that Katniss was sleeping over, as if she didn’t already spend every night in Prim’s room) when they got up from their seats and headed for the door.

     “Hey, guys, wait,” a voice behind them called. Katniss turned to see Peeta coming out from the back. “You have a ride, right?”

     They nodded, both of them at once. He looked relieved.

     “Good. That’s safest. Do you mind if I lock up after you?” he asked, jingling a set of keys in his hand. “I mean, we’re closing like right now, so I have to anyway, but.”

     Prim smiled. “Of course.”

    They walked to the door, Peeta trailing behind them. When they reached it and headed outside, he stayed in the doorway and looked around, as if wary about leaving them out there alone. But he shook it off quickly, comforted by the notion that they were together and that they had a ride coming.

     “See ya,” he said pleasantly, and he closed the glass door as its bells chimed over his head. He flipped the hanging laminated sign from OPEN to CLOSED and retreated into the bakery.

     “He’ll probably see you in his dreams,” teased Prim, poking Katniss’s arm with one hand and then the other. “In all seriousness, though, if you weren’t a Guardian angel and all…wouldn’t you be interested?”

     Katniss didn’t know how to respond. She furrowed her brow and struggled to find words. “I don’t know,” she finally said. “I don’t understand romantic love the way I understand this.” She gestured between them. “Loving you, Primrose, is my job—though I would love you anyway, because you are truly inspiring—but I don’t know anything else. I don’t know Peeta, and I wouldn’t know how to love him, if that’s what you’re asking.”

     Prim nodded. “Okay, I see what you’re saying. But just for the record…I don’t think loving someone is something you _know_ how to do. It’s just something you do,” she said. “I suppose people can learn to love and all that jazz, but you are practically an embodiment of love. You couldn’t do it wrong because it’s what you were made to do—to love.”

     Katniss liked the sound of that. She’d always known she’d been made to be a Guardian, a glorified babysitter if you will, and that had always been okay. But the way Prim put it, that she was made to _love_ , it sounded so much better.

 ****

A week or so passed, and every time they went to the bakery, Katniss caught a glimpse of him. He came out to fill the display cases with pretty cakes and cupcakes and the latest batches of cheese buns, he helped Cap wipe off tables, and once he simply emerged to add to the Take-A-Penny-Leave-A-Penny dish sitting on the counter.

     Prim said that some people would almost be creeped out, but Katniss could see that his intentions were always good. She still didn’t know what to feel when it came to his affections and his attention, but overall she felt like he was a lovely person that deserved to be treated as such.

     One Sunday morning while shopping at a thrift store, Prim and Katniss saw Peeta and Cap hauling in boxes of clothes. The boys didn’t notice them, even as their oldest brother came in with a couple of hatboxes. He put them carefully down on the counter with the others and hung back as the woman behind the counter started to inventory the items.

      “Walden,” Cap said gently, “Where’s the other box?”

     “In the car,” was Walden’s reply. He crossed his arms and looked out the window at the parking lot. “I’m not going to get it.”

     “Peeta,” Cap sighed. “Will you get it?”

     “No,” said Walden, shaking his head. He wouldn’t look at either of his brothers. “Giving away her clothes is one thing, you know she wouldn’t have cared, but her _books_? I’m not letting you give away her books.”

     “It’s not all of them,” Peeta said, trying to be comforting. “Just some of the outliers, the ones she didn’t love as much.”

     This was the most emotion either of them had ever seen Walden display. Prim and Katniss shared a glance before returning their attention to the scene that was unfolding. Walden was staring at the ground between his feet now, and Peeta was starting to look as if he might cry. Cap was simply angry.

     “You know what, fuck that,” he said. “She would’ve wanted them to be read. She wouldn’t have wanted them to sit around gathering dust.”

     “I doubt she would’ve wanted us to just throw them away either,” said Walden. “What if she wanted us to keep them, for prosperity’s sake? For our kids.”

     “Well, we can’t know exactly what she would’ve wanted, can we? She didn’t—”

     “Stop it. Both of you, just stop,” said Peeta, latching onto Cap’s shoulder and squeezing, before he had the chance to get out the rest of his sentence. It worked, though, and neither of his brothers opened their mouths again. He turned to the woman at the counter. “Just these things, then. Sorry about the conflict, it’s just hard to let go.”

     The woman nodded understandingly and went back to looking through the items. Walden sulked out of the store and stood outside, and Cap wandered off towards the bookshelves, the bright colors of his t-shirt acting like a beacon to anyone who wanted to find him—it was mostly a soft turquoise color, but the front was dominated by a flag of pink, yellow, and a more vibrant blue. Peeta stayed there, waiting for the slip that documented everything he donated, which was a lot.

     He spotted them eventually, waved shyly, and turned his eyes towards anything but Prim and Katniss. Katniss, however, could still see the blush that stained his cheeks. How embarrassing, she thought, to have your family’s problems displayed in front of the entire store—Katniss, Prim, the store’s three present employees, the woman that was shopping with her young son, and the old man in the book section had all witnessed the dispute

     He moved to the side when the girls approached the counter with the clothing items they’d found for Prim—a floral patterned dress and a denim vest. When they got to the register, the woman pushed the boxes out of the way and rung up the merchandise.

     Peeta stood just to the left of where Katniss was, and as he played with the desk calendar, his arm accidentally brushed against hers. They both pulled away quickly, and his blush seemed to intensify. Just as Cap emerged from the book section, Katniss and Prim left, having learned more than they thought they would in a thrift shop on a Sunday morning.

 ****

The next week, spring had officially sprung. The snow had melted and the rains were moving in—by Thursday, there were puddles and sludge everywhere and Katniss had mud on her shoes if she so much as stepped into the grass.

     At the bakery that afternoon, Prim checked the weekend’s forecast using her phone.

     “Ick. It’s supposed to thunderstorm Saturday. Wanna see a movie with my mom?” she asked Katniss, who sipped her caramel macchiato and smiled.

     “Yes. You know, you were born during a thunderstorm,” she told Prim, who lifted her eyebrows. “What, your mom never told you?”

     “No. She doesn’t talk about when I was little very much, you know that,” Prim replied, shaking her head slowly, almost sadly. “She was mourning, and I think she’s ashamed that she wasn’t as present as she should’ve been? I don’t know.”

     It was true that Carol had done poorly those first few years, and had been mentally absent more than she was physically absent—hence the fact that she’d never noticed the extra hands raising her child. She never noticed when she didn’t have to change Prim’s diapers as often, or when she barely had to teach her how to walk, barely had to potty train her.

     But Katniss didn’t mind. Taking care of Prim was her job, and she was happy to do it. She had known a lot about humanity—how they lived, what they did, why they were special—when she came to Earth, but being with Prim taught her all about the beauty in living, and in loving.

     Katniss hardly believed that there could ever be pain in loving—she watched people on TV repeatedly say that they loved so much it hurt, or that love itself hurt, but she didn’t get it. Maybe, if the person you loved wronged you, or was difficult to love, she supposed that it could sting. But the real pain that people thought was in love, it was really in loss, or in the fear of loss.

     Katniss’s experience on Earth was limited. She knew only the warmth and kindness of love, and though she had seen the news and heard the stories of distant tragedies and injustices, she did not truly _know_ them, just like so many humans never would.  What she did not realize was the probability of tragedy, and how it was so much higher than it should have been. Katniss was, of course, afraid of loss.

      But she was never as afraid of loss as she should have been.

    ****

They were running late, and it had already begun to pour. Katniss was lounging on the couch, waiting as Prim and her mother rushed all around the apartment getting their things together, and she wondered how they could possibly need so much stuff when all they were doing was going to see a movie.

      When they finally got moving, they dashed out into the rain and to Mrs. Everdeen’s six-year-old Honda, where Prim took the passenger seat, putting her purse next to Katniss in the back.

      “If Posy texts me, tell her what we’re up to. I want to rub it in her face that we’re seeing this before she gets to,” she said to Katniss, smirking before she turned to face the front of the car again. 

     “That’s about as evil as you’ll ever get,” Katniss said, feigning a resigned tone and facial expression. She met Prim’s eyes in the rearview mirror. “So I will allow it. I won’t even say your name admonishingly.”

     Prim and her mother both laughed. Carol pulled out of the parking lot and out onto the road, where the rain was falling down in sheets but there was still some visibility. The movie theater they were going to was in another town, because Mrs. Everdeen had a coupon for it and the movie they were seeing wasn’t being shown today at the local one.

     As they drove, thunder crashed, and Prim turned up the radio. A catchy early 2000s song was playing as they reached the highway between the towns, and Prim wrinkled her nose while Katniss and Carol sung along—they could remember when it played on the radio in Prim’s early years, the ones she could hardly remember.

     Prim’s text tone went off, somewhere in the depths of her shiny silver handbag.

     Almost at the same moment, another car on the road started hydroplaning. As Katniss began to dig through the bag, no longer singing but still bobbing her head to the music, the other driver began to lose control of his vehicle.

      Katniss pulled the phone out and was about to read Posy’s text message, but she dropped it when their car was jolted to the side. The impact was quick, a deafening crash that roared louder than the thunder in Katniss’s right ear. She felt shards of glass and heard the squeal of tires, and for a moment was disoriented before the realization hit.

     Another car had slammed into the side of the Honda. Its front left area, the driver’s side, was smashed against the Everdeen’s passenger side, the front right.

     Katniss left the car to observe from the outside, and in the split-second it took to disappear and rematerialize outside, her gut wrenched with sudden terror. The passenger side. _Prim._

     The crash was over, but there was still ringing in her ears. Thunder still boomed and rain still hit the pavement relentlessly, acting as though it didn’t care how long the road took to wear down as long as it never stopped beating it. Water eroded most materials—the Grand Canyon was a huge example of that. When Prim had learned about it in school, in the fourth grade, she’d come home with the desire to someday see it, this astounding geographical artwork that water had taken years and years to craft.

     And there it was, the very thing she’d been dreading—when she closed her eyes and reached out with her mind and heart and soul to find the bright light of Prim’s ever-glowing life force, all she felt was a cold sort of absence and the raindrops on her skin.

     An eternity seemed to pass in that heart-shattering moment, the moment Katniss knew that it was all over. She heard the sirens, the roar of the thunder and rain, the shouting of concerned drivers that had pulled to the side of the road, but none of it mattered. Nothing mattered now.

     The rational part of her knew that there was nothing she could have done, but everything else in her screamed of failure, of guilt, of raw and bleeding grief.

     “You’re her Guardian, aren’t you?” said a solemn voice beside her. Another angel, dark-skinned and towering, with flowing dark hair and a gown of brilliant white. Her shimmering silver wings were spread, but she was invisible to the spectators, to everyone but Katniss.

     “Yes,” Katniss replied, her voice so weak and limp compared to the melodious tones of the Collector before her. She was here to take Prim.

     “As you can probably tell, it was rather quick…she wouldn’t have felt much pain before it was over,” said the other angel, placing a hand on Katniss’s shoulder. And then they were right there, in the midst of it, and Katniss couldn’t even look. But at the same time, she had to.

     Prim’s head was at an odd angle, her face scraped up with broken glass, her eyes staring blankly. Her precise cause of death was unclear, and Katniss didn’t care to know. She was just _dead._

      The Collector angel leaned into the wreck and withdrew a stream of light that seemed to flow like liquid, pooling into her hand and onto the road between them. Prim’s essence, soul, everything that was left of the person she was. She quickly took shape, but she was translucent, silvery—she looked like Prim, but without the color of life. She was like smoke, Katniss thought, but smoke that you were terrified of losing to the wind.

      The girl looked around, startled and disoriented, as Katniss would’ve thought most souls were following their deaths. “What…oh no…am I…?” Prim seemed to answer her own questions as she took in the scene around her, piecing it together. “Oh.”

      Katniss couldn’t take it. She fell to her knees, sobbing, her lungs burning with each broken breath.

     Prim looked between her Guardian and her Collector, frowning.

     “I am so, so sorry Prim,” Katniss gasped, and what a sight she must have been—sobbing to herself before Prim and the Collector, visible only to them, but streaked with dirt and tears and blood all the same. “This never should have happened, God, I am so, so sorry.”

     Prim’s wispy form knelt with her, and for the first time, they reached for each other and found themselves unable to touch. Unable to wipe away the other’s tears, to be wrapped in the other’s embrace, unable to feel the comfort of having a literal shoulder to cry on. This, among all the heartbreaks of the day, might have been the worst.

     Or maybe the worst was yet to come.

     “You don’t have to be sorry, Katniss,” said Prim softly. She sounded as she always did, but there was something so…so _far away_ about her voice, and Katniss knew she was imagining it because she knew it’d be the last time she’d hear it. “I’m okay. I’ll be okay.”

     Prim got up, then, and took the Collector’s hand in hers.

     “I’m ready,” she whispered, and Katniss watched through blurry, tear-filled eyes as they moved away, their forms flickering and fading into the torrents of persistent rain.


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter Three**

_"Sometimes even the flight of an angel hits turbulence..." -Terri Guillemets_

* * *

 

 

Katniss had never been to New York City, but she imagined that even late March still felt a little like winter there, and that they didn’t have the same sprawling lawns and budding treetops that little Panem City, Virginia had. She was glad that Carol had moved here following her husband’s death, not only because she was able to distance herself from the constant reminders of what had happened, but also because here, Prim would always get to see spring sooner.

     Prim had always loved the spring, when the air smelled of flowers and rebirth, and they had visiting days at the local farm and petting zoo. She loved running barefoot in dewy grass and wearing flowers in her hair, and she even loved going outside after it rained and watching the worms that squirmed along the pavement in all their slimy glory.

      It was like that on Monday, the rains having just let up that morning. Birds chirped and there was mud everywhere, again, and Katniss stood there with her bare feet squished in it because it was what Prim would’ve had the compulsion to do. Katniss stared at her feet, wiggling in the dirt and the grass, not wanting to look up and see the cluster of black-clad people surrounding the casket, which was a stunning white that stood out among the group of mourners. Katniss knew that the funeral arrangements had been made by Prim’s grandparents, who’d gotten on a plane to Virginia as soon as they had heard, and this fitting choice was credited to them.

     White was a symbol of purity, and Prim was as pure as they got. They’d also chosen the flower arrangements, white daisies and the palest pink roses that looked almost the same color from where she stood, apart from the gathered crowd. Pretty much everyone who had ever known Prim showed their face: her teachers, several classmates, various shopkeepers. Even Mr. Mellark and two of his three sons stood solemnly near the back of the group.

     Many of them said a few kind words, but Posy eulogized. She said that Prim was widely loved, and she said that she was the gentlest person she’d ever known, and she said that it would take her forever to get used to a world without Prim in it but she would pull through, that they’d all pull through, because that was what Prim would’ve wanted. And even though her voice trembled and cracked, Posy spoke beautifully, and unlike some eulogies, every word she said was true.

     As it ended, and the attendees trailed away from the gravesite, Katniss remembered Prim’s small and far away voice whispering _“You don’t have to be sorry, I’ll be okay. I’m ready.”_

     What about Katniss? _She_ wasn’t okay. _She_ wasn’t ready. 

     She had been warned that the world was full of pain, and she’d been warned that emotion was not always smooth sailing, and angels allowing themselves to feel almost always regretted it later. But Katniss never regretted loving Prim, even now that she was gone.

     She was angry that it happened, angry that Prim’s life had to end so soon, and she was angry that she hadn’t been able to stop it. She ached with the absence of Prim’s glowing life force, with the knowledge that she’d never see her smile again or hear her voice. It hurt that Prim wouldn’t get to go to prom or have a boyfriend or fill out college applications like all the other kids her age would be doing soon.

     But she could not let herself stop _feeling_ it. 

     She broke down crying again, sitting on the ground in the mud and ruining the back of her skirt, but it wasn’t as though that couldn’t be fixed. She cried because Prim was gone, her _reason for existing_ was gone, and that couldn’t be fixed. She curled into something resembling the fetal position, trembling there in the open, forgetting she was visible because she was too busy trying to forget everything else—the crash, the rain, the silvery translucence of the girl that was already gone.

      “Katniss…”

     The voice came from above her, close and familiar, but she couldn’t place it. She wiped her face and looked up, finding that the sun was behind the figure standing over her, blindingly streaming through the gold of his hair and casting his face in shadow.

     Peeta. His posture gave away all, the way he stood with his hands in his pockets and his shoulders sagging in a humble sort of way. He wrestled one of his hands from his pocket and held it out to Katniss, offering kindly to help her up off the ground, but she just stared at him instead of taking it.

     “I don’t know if I want to get up,” she said hoarsely, and Peeta nodded understandingly. Instead of asking her why, or walking away, he sat on the ground beside her, leaving a few inches of grass between them. Her eyes were swimming with tears, distorting her vision, but she still watched him as he squinted in the sunlight. He’d worn all the components of a suit except the jacket, but he wore his tie loosened and the sleeves of his white shirt rolled up to his elbows.

     “She meant the world to you,” he said after a stretch of silence. He looked like he had in the thrift store, which seemed like an eternity ago—like he was going to cry but also like he wasn’t going to let himself. “I don’t know how I know, but she did, didn’t she?”

     Katniss paused before slowly nodding. He looked over at her, grief and sympathy creasing his brow.

     “I’m so sorry this happened,” he said. “If you ever need anything, you know where to find me. Okay?”

     She didn’t answer, because she didn’t know what to say. Peeta got up, and, after discovering the mud on the seat of his pants, he blushed slightly. Katniss remained silent as he tucked his hands back in his pockets and strode towards where his brothers and his father waited for him by the car. Cap caught her eye from where he stood and waved weakly, and she could almost hear his halfhearted teasing when Peeta returned, more for the mud than anything.

     Katniss waited there, unmoving, until there was no one around to watch her disappear.

 ****

Eighteen months.

     The envelope hand landed in her lap the next morning, her name written across the front in silver script. In one corner, a cross and the words “from the offices of Heaven” were written in smaller print of the same color—which meant she was obligated to open it. She had already spent the night in an isolated armchair in the back of the Station, refusing anything and everything offered to her whether it be communication or a simple glass of water.

    It was a condolence letter and a business letter all in one, outlining how tragic the sudden loss of her charge was and how her leave between assignments would be extended because of the circumstances. Instead of the usual year, Katniss would have eighteen months to piece herself back together before she’d be given to another child somewhere. She couldn’t bear the thought of replacing Prim.

     She tossed the letter into a nearby wastebasket as soon as she’d finished reading it, and she could see it go up in golden flames—the message had been designed to self destruct by holy fire in case she’d been on Earth when she read it. Heaven took secrecy somewhat seriously, though it wasn’t a top priority—keeping the mystery of living alive for humanity was important, but not so important as the whole mission of keeping them safe was.

     Despite how many times she was assured that what happened couldn’t have been stopped, that it wasn’t her fault, Katniss still felt like she’d failed. Not that she’d failed the mission, or that she’d failed Heaven, but that she’d failed Prim and broken the unspoken promise she’d made to protect her from anything that could ever hurt her.

     And so she spent two of those eighteen months sitting in that chair in the Station, drinking when it couldn’t really make her drunk and switching the view of the window she stared out—the desert, the mountains, the jungle. She tended to avoid cities and towns in her stationary sightseeing, because if she saw a blond braid or a baby’s smile, she would always feel like breaking again.

     June had just begun and Katniss was staring out at a deserted beach under the cover of darkness, somewhere in the world where it was dark, nowhere near Virginia. The other chair in the same corner was occupied, but she hadn’t bothered to look and see who it was—it was just another angelic presence now.

     “Katniss,” said the presence, and she placed the voice as the same one that had tried repeatedly to get through to her. Madge got up from her seat and pulled down the shades. Katniss looked at her, not indignantly or thoughtfully, but numbly. “You can’t sit around changing the view for sixteen more months.”

      “Is there a rule that says I can’t?” she asked, curious.

     “No. Yes,” Madge quickly contradicted herself. “There _is_ a rule against that, in Madge’s Rules of Angeling.”

     Katniss was almost certain that “angeling” wasn’t a real word.

     Madge sighed and sat back in her chair, “What I mean is…this isn’t helping you. I know that you’re grieving, and I respect that, but you need to get out. See the world for real. Visit her.”

     By _her_ , of course, Madge meant Prim. And of course, she meant where her body was buried. There was no communicating with the dead after they were gone—they were left undisturbed in Heaven, and that was the way. No matter how much Katniss wanted to, she couldn’t really visit Prim, just like no matter how much she wanted to, she couldn’t turn back the clock and prevent her from dying in the first place.

     “I can’t,” Katniss said.

     “Why?” asked Madge. “Is it really that you can’t, Katniss, or is it that you _won’t_?”

 ****

In the end, Madge had cracked her. She was, after all, a Messenger. If she didn’t have a way with words, where would she be?

     Katniss had stubbornly waited in her chair until Madge had vacated the premises, had one more glass of something or other, and then she went. She materialized at the cemetery gates, instantly feeling the warmth of the afternoon sun on her skin. She’d chosen summery clothes, so as not to stand out while visible, because it turned out that Katniss preferred visibility over being unseen. She didn’t know why—it had made her feel closer to Prim, at first, but now that Prim was no longer around it was inexplicable.

     She walked along the paved pathways until she spotted the place where Prim was buried beside her mother’s parents. She knew very little about them, but she knew that they’d been born and raised in Panem City, and they’d barely ever left. Like Prim, even though she had the desire to go places and do things before she got old. But despite the difference in ambition, they were all here, in Panem City forever with all the other people who might have wanted to leave, but didn’t, and those who left but always came back.

     Her heart protested when she stepped onto the grass, starting to head towards the cluster of graves. She hadn’t been here since the funeral, which suddenly felt like it was yesterday, because of how clear it was—the more recent a memory was, the clearer it was in your head, or so it should’ve been. There was a second of hesitation brought on by the sudden remembrance, of the pure white casket and flowers, the little memorial wreath set up with Prim’s picture on display. The mourners, the mud, the way Katniss’s chest felt like it wanted to cave in.

      But then she was propelled forward by the knowledge that this was the closest thing she could have to really being with Prim again.

     There was no one around, no one to see her come to an abrupt halt over Prim’s headstone. Her name was etched into the stone, the dates beneath it emphasizing just how young she was.

**_November 2001—March 2017_ **

     Everything was as she knew it would be, the words in the stone making her heart ache and the humidity making the air even heavier than it already felt. Except that there were flowers, what looked like half of a small florist’s bouquet of pinks and purples and yellows, but dried and dying under the almost-summer sun. They were clearly a few days old.

      She figured it was Posy, or someone else who had known Prim—Mrs. Everdeen wouldn’t have had the strength to do that, not yet. Grief made her negligent, and Katniss knew that better than anyone. She probably hadn’t even gone back to work yet.

     Katniss took a deep breath and lowered herself onto the ground, curling her fingers in the grass and bowing her head, searching herself for the strength that she knew had to be there. It _had_ to be there, she _needed_ it.

     She found it a moment later, or something like it.

     “Hi, Prim,” she found herself saying, her voice weak. She said it, even though she knew Prim couldn’t hear her from here. She remembered that moment a long time ago, when she’d caught Mrs. Everdeen talking to a portrait of her husband, when she’d realized why people bothered talking to the dead without knowing whether they’d be heard—love made you want to keep people in whatever way possible, and speaking to them as if they could hear was a way to keep the bond alive even when the other person was gone. Katniss didn’t realize how much she’d needed that.

     She talked to Prim about the sunsets and sunrises she’d watched, about the mountains and deserts and endless pastures, and she recalled a moment when Prim was about ten and she was playing with the globe in her fifth grade classroom. She’d wondered aloud what the stars looked like from there, and what kind of plants they had here, and if the people were nice there—childish, innocent questions hinting at the curiosity that lived in her, the desire to learn new things. She would’ve been beautiful, travelling the world someday, learning new things and meeting new people.

     “We could’ve explored together, you and me,” Katniss whispered, lightly touching the headstone. Her tears flowed freely, but she was astonished at how much better she felt. Of course, she still grieved, and of course everything still felt wrong, but she felt like talking to Prim, being here, feeling the breeze was helping towards things feeling right again.

     “Katniss?”

     Katniss was startled, and her hand slipped off the grave marker as her head whipped around towards the source of the voice. He was standing at the end of the row, half a bouquet dangling from one hand, the other tucked into his pocket, as was typical of him it seemed. He was wearing jeans and a t-shirt instead of the dress clothes she’d last seen him in, and he looked considerably less likely to cry.

     “Wow, I thought that was you. Hi,” said Peeta. He ambled over, joining her by Prim’s graveside. “It’s been a while, hasn’t it? I kept ho…thinking I might see you around, but it was like you vanished off the face of the Earth.”

     He didn’t know how true that was.

     “It would’ve helped if I’d known your last name, though,” he added. She watched, stunned, as he knelt beside her—careful to leave space, of course—and removed the wilted flowers from where they were lain, replacing them with the fresh ones in his hand. It had been _him_? He whispered something and patted the headstone when he stood back up.

     It sounded like _Godspeed_.

     Katniss stared up at him. He held out his hand again, and her memories of the funeral felt all too present all over again. But that part had not been as painful. It had almost been comforting, the way Peeta sat with her for just a minute or two.

     This time, she took his hand and let him help her up. She was done here anyway. Peeta gave her a small little smile and started to walk off, but he stopped midstride and turned around again.

     “Hey, do you wanna come by the bakery? Cheese buns, coffee, even just to talk?” he asked her, shoving both of his hands deep into the pockets of his faded jeans. Katniss immediately shook her head.

     “I have to go,” she mumbled, striding back towards the path and hurrying along, leaving him standing there. Despite the fact that they’d have to exit the cemetery in the same place, Peeta didn’t follow her, which made things easier. As soon as she was out of sight, out of the cemetery and behind the brick wall that surrounded it, she teleported herself away.

****

The next day she checked on Mrs. Everdeen, who was still wearing black every day. She was curled up on the couch of a friend or coworker or something, catatonic at the worst times and somewhat distant at the best. At least she fed herself at least one meal a day and got up when she had to use the restroom. At least she slept.

     Katniss wasn’t about to judge her, of course, because she’d spent the last two months living similarly. The only huge difference was that Katniss couldn’t starve to death if she forgot to eat for too long, and Katniss didn’t have to worry about her job or her taxes or anything that adult humans had to deal with.

     And now, the difference was that Katniss had left her chair in the Station, and she was out finding closure, mending herself. Carol Everdeen didn’t even think to try.

 ****

A couple of days later, Katniss went to see Prim again.

     She talked about how she worried for Mrs. Everdeen, and how she was hesitant to interfere—if she helped behind the scenes, someone would notice, and if she helped openly it would be confusing for everyone involved. She had put herself in the role of Prim’s friend, and had never established a relationship with Carol outside of that.

     The flowers Peeta had placed there the other day were wilting by now, and she wondered when he’d be by to refresh them.

      Of course, she didn’t have to wonder long.

     “Hey,” he said as he strolled over. “How are you doing?”

     “Better than her mother,” said Katniss, and then briefly explained the state that Mrs. Everdeen was in. She didn’t look up at Peeta, preferring to gaze lovingly and sadly at the ground.

     “That’s awful,” he said, letting out a puff of air. “She and my father are old friends—I’m sure he’d check in on her for you, if you’d like.”

     “Thank you, Peeta,” she told him as he sat down, leaning over to remove the old flowers and replace them with fresh ones—a pair of blue carnations.

     “Don’t mention it.”

     “Why do you do this?” she asked. “Come here, bring her flowers? It has to be costly.”

     “Not really. I know the florist,” Peeta explained, sitting back and pulling his legs up towards his chest. He gestured absently with the dying flowers. “I already come here every few days, to visit…someone else. I figured that person didn’t always need a whole bouquet, and I knew how much Prim loved them…”

     “Thank you, Peeta.”

     He laughed lightly, not with so much cheer but a laugh nonetheless. “Katniss, you’ve already said that.”

     “For something else entirely. And because I mean it. _Thank you_.”

     He shrugged, the fabric of his white t-shirt shifting as his shoulders moved. Katniss stared at him, but he went on without noticing for a full thirty seconds or so. And when he did, he smiled. She would’ve thought a bright smile like his would be out of place in a cemetery, but with the birds chirping somewhere in the distance and the sun catching strands in his hair that shimmered, it all fit beautifully.

     “My offer from the other day still stands, if you’re willing,” he finally said.

     She politely refused and left him, and she was pretty sure she felt his eyes on her back as she walked away.

 ****

It went on that way. Every time Katniss visited Prim’s grave, Peeta would appear with flowers and a smile. He always asked how she was doing, gave her updates on how Mrs. Everdeen was faring—his father had been bringing her blueberry muffins from the bakery, her favorite, and after a few weeks of just passing them off to her friends she actually began to eat them.

     More days passed, and once she even hid to see if he’d come anyway, and he did.

     It was as if someone planned it—even if Katniss changed the amount of days between her visits, Peeta was there, as if someone had told him. Every time, he asked about the bakery—not persistently, always gently, and once he even told her that he understood why. It wasn’t because she was busy—she had all the time in the world—but because she was afraid to set foot inside a place where she and Prim shared so many memories.    

      “Yes, exactly,” she had said, and Peeta nodded.

     “I know how it feels,” he replied, “I promise, it gets easier, and maybe someday you’ll be ready.”

_Maybe_ , she thought. Maybe.

     It had already been almost a month on the day that she showed up later than usual, walking to Prim’s section of the cemetery and standing at the end of the row. Of course, he was there, having already replaced the flowers, sitting there in silence. She wasn’t sure what he was doing until he looked around and spotted her, and she watched his eyes light up.

     He’d been waiting for her.

     “Hello, Peeta,” she said pleasantly as he got up and strode towards her.

     “Hi. I was, um…” He stopped in front of her, scratching the back of his neck. “Somehow you’re always here when I come, so I thought…”

     “You waited for me,” she said. “Why?”

     “You look confused, Katniss. I waited because, well, I thought we were kind of friends,” he said. “I like it when we talk, and talking seems to make you feel a little bit better.”

     He was right, it did. Talking about the warm weather or about Cap’s antics, or even about Prim, felt better than sitting there in silence. Once, when a butterfly landed on his head, and they’d both laughed, it seemed like what Prim would’ve wanted. Crying over her grave was one thing, but talking and laughing and being alive? Prim would’ve rejoiced.

     “It does. I appreciate you very much, Peeta,” she said. “Thank you for waiting for me.”

     “Thanks for appreciating me,” he said with a short laugh. “Well, I hope you don’t mind if I head out…”

     “I don’t mind.”

     “Good. Okay.” He lightly touched her shoulder as he passed. Katniss stared at him as he sauntered back towards the path, and he was almost there before she realized.

     “Peeta!” she called. He turned.

     “Yes?” a crooked, impish smile curled his mouth. She could see that even from several rows of graves away.

    Katniss had once thought that cemeteries were sad places, for grieving, but that was only partly true. They could also be places of peaceful remembrance, even celebration of the lives people led before they died. So it was as good a place as any to be happy, to feel appreciated, to yell at Peeta and to watch him smile at her like that.

     “Did you forget something?”

     He took a few big steps toward her. “Did I?”

     She stared at him, smiling. When Prim died, she’d felt like never smiling again, and she might’ve even forgotten how if Peeta hadn’t been around to remind her.

     “Come back with me,” he said cheerfully. “To the bakery.”

      Neither of them was surprised when she jogged over to him and said yes, because the second she’d called him out on “forgetting” to ask was the second they’d both known that she was ready to go back to the cozy ambiance and good coffee and amazing cheese buns of Panem City Bakery.

     Katniss didn’t know if the dead could see the living, she just knew that it couldn’t work the other way around. But she thought that if they could, Prim would certainly be smiling down on her now.


	4. Chapter 4

**_Chapter Four_ **

_"All God's angels come to us disguised..."  - James Russell Lowell_

* * *

 

 

That first day, it was too soon to sit in Katniss and Prim’s favorite corner, so they chose one of the tables near the middle of the bakery, bordered by a guy with huge glasses hunched over a laptop and an older couple that read battered paperbacks while they held hands from across the table.

     “Cheese buns?” Peeta asked as Katniss sat down, and she looked at him like he was insane.

     “Don’t ask stupid questions, Peeta.”

     “Never again,” he said, absently tapping on the surface of the table. “Do you want anything in particular to drink?”

     “Just a coffee, please,” she replied. And then he went, rounding the counter and slipping behind it instead of ordering. While he poured the coffee and made brief small talk with the girl behind the counter—the cheerful blonde that was there on weekends and Wednesdays—Katniss folded her hands in her lap and looked around the bakery. She had missed its charm, though she could still feel the echoes of Prim here—not physically, but in her memory. When she looked to the corner, in her mind’s eye she could see herself and Prim with their chairs pushed together, sipping their drinks and laughing about nothing.

     She sighed. In her peripheral vision, Peeta ducked into the kitchen for just a second before emerging with a plate of cheese buns that she could smell from the table, clearly fresh out of the oven. There were three still in the display case, but Peeta had retrieved four fresh ones for the two of them instead. He took two trips to bring everything over, and then he joined her at the table and smiled.

     She returned it, because she couldn’t help it.

     “Are you all right with this?” he asked, his eyes searching her for any hint of discomfort in this place that was so full of memories, things that were lost. She nodded.

      “Yes, I am,” she assured him, and she was. Madge had been right when she’d convinced Katniss to visit the cemetery that day. Running away from everything that she missed, from everything that hurt, was only going to prolong it—living without Prim was like swimming without knowing how to stay afloat, and the only way she was going to figure out what to do was if she ventured out of the safety of the shallow end.

      They talked like they always did, just in a different setting, and it was nice. When Cap came out to wipe tables, he hurried over and gave her a hug, which was awkward but appreciated. As he went back to work, the boys bantered lightly, which made her laugh. Peeta talked about the book he was reading, and about the book he was supposed to be reading over the summer for an assignment, but that he hadn’t so much as glanced at since he bought a copy. Katniss talked about the books she’d read in her time as well, though she didn’t mention when—sometimes there was required reading during her training in Heaven, and sometimes during the hours that Prim slept or went to school, she’d pick something up to pass the time.

     Before seeing Peeta again, all Katniss had felt was grief and aching and guilt, but since then she’d begun to feel other things again—she could laugh, smile, and work around the hole inside her that she knew would never quite heal.

     “Hey,” Peeta said as she gazed at her empty coffee cup, lost in thought. By now, she’d already been through two. “What are you thinking about?”

     “How much I miss Prim.”

     “Oh,” he nodded understandingly and lightly touched her hand for the briefest moment. “Can I say something about that?” he asked carefully.

     She nodded.

      “Death sucks. It really does, especially for everyone still alive. You have to live in a world without someone you knew and loved, knowing you will never see them again, and it’s _terrible_ ,” he said. “But then it gets manageable. It’s easier to see the beauty in everything you still have, and easier to hope for better things in the future, and easier to see that as long as you remember, you won’t really lose them. I promise it won’t always hurt as much as it does.”

      “Right.”

     She understood what he was saying, and really, she found she was pretty much already there. It was not unbearable anymore—it wasn’t easy, but she could look ahead and see herself without the constant emptiness she had in her. She couldn’t quite see herself with another charge, and she couldn’t imagine ever feeling content with what happened to Prim, but Peeta was right when he talked about hope. Hope was what mattered, really.

      He had so much of that.

 ****

It became like routine—every couple of days they would meet at the cemetery, at Prim’s gravesite, and they would stay there a few minutes before going to the bakery. The end of June faded into the beginning of July, and Katniss helped Peeta hang patriotic stars and streamers up around the bakery. A week or so later, she helped him take them down on a day the bakery was almost empty.

     And then she sat in the corner by the fireplace without even thinking about it, her tea in one hand and the phone she’d just bought in the other. Peeta pushed through the kitchen doors with a plate of cheese buns and stopped in his tracks, watching her until the realization hit. As she felt herself begin to crumble, he must’ve seen it on her face, because he hurried over and put the plate on the end table. Then he took everything from her hands and unloaded it there too.

     Cap gave her hugs all the time, but when Peeta wrapped her up in her arms, Katniss was surprised. But not enough that she didn’t squeeze back, burying her face in his shirt as she cried. He held her until it passed, when she felt like she could breathe again, and when he withdrew he looked like it pained him. Or maybe, like her distress pained him.

     “Do I get a cupcake?” she asked.

     “What?”

     “The last time Cap hugged me he said I was the best hugger ever and that I deserved payment,” she replied, plucking a napkin from a nearby dispenser and wiping her nose. “So he gave me a cupcake. He said he frosted it himself.”

     “It must’ve looked awful.”

     She laughed. “It did—it was all lopsided. But it tasted wonderful.”

     “Are you actually charging for hugs now, Katniss?” he asked. “Is that how this is gonna be? Because my cupcake game is far better than my stupid brother’s.”

       She only shook her head and laughed, and by the time she left, she didn’t feel sad anymore.

     Katniss had always thought Peeta was a sweet boy, but as they grew closer, her heart opened to him more and more. It had taken her no time at all to love Prim, but that was an exception, and most people she’d met in her entire life had had to grow on her. As a young angel, she’d been at odds with Gale more than she’d been friendly with him, and Madge had had to work twice as hard to gain Katniss’s friendship than she’d initially thought. However, Katniss and Peeta had been fast friends, and she found it very easy to talk with him and be around him.

     He even reminded her of Prim sometimes, but it almost never made her sad—it was just that he was persistently kind and loving and hopeful like she had been. He was so unlike Prim too, in the fact that he knew what the deepest heartache felt like, the kind Prim had never had to feel. She was sure now that that sadness she’d always detected in him was tied to his mother somehow, but she never asked or pushed for information, just like he never pushed for anything from her.

       As the days became mid-July, Peeta started asking her about her college plans. She’d told people she was a high school senior when she was with Prim, but now she was expected to progress from there. She didn’t, however, have the necessary requirements to do it—she wasn’t human, after all, though sometimes she felt like she was. And talking about it really just reminded her of how Prim would never be able to go to college and have the future she’d deserved.

     She didn’t cry, but Peeta saw the look on her face and changed the subject. When she hugged him later, he gave her a chocolate cupcake with a swirl of green frosting and little candy pearls.

      Green was her favorite color. Katniss wondered how he’d known, but then she remembered when she’d told him, when he’d asked her about her favorite everything—favorite song, favorite food, and of course, favorite color.

      “What’s yours?” she had asked, and Peeta had leaned back in his chair so that the front legs were lifted off the ground. “Don’t do that, you’ll fall.”

      “Okay,” he said, dropping it to the ground again obediently. He’d looked at her for an extended moment before answering her question. “Orange. Not traffic cone orange, but like what you see in a sunset.”

     She almost changed her favorite color to blue in that moment, because of the way his eyes sparkled when he smiled at her.

 

 ****

“I don’t like it.”

       In a booth at the Station, Gale’s wings were bowed forward so that the feathers brushed the table and spread enough that he took up his entire side. But he was comfortable.

     “Why do you always have your wings out? They clearly don’t fit in this booth,” said Katniss. Gale scowled, but it was true—even if he’d had a smaller wingspan than he did, something more like Katniss’s, he still wouldn’t fit.

     “I don’t like to hide them. Don’t change the subject, Katniss,” he said gruffly, chugging from his bottle of root beer and practically slamming it down on the table. “You’ve gone and befriended a _mortal_.”

      The way he said _mortal_ carried almost as much venom as the way he said _demon_. Not that he hated humanity—he protected them for a living—but he wasn’t keen on associating with them.

     “Why is there something wrong with that?” she asked.

     “It’s just…ugh…”

     “You’re very good with words, aren’t you?”

     “Shut it, _Catnip,_ ” he grumbled. “We’re not supposed to befriend them.”

     “I say we are—we’re made to love and protect humanity, so in what world would we not be allowed to be friends with them?” Katniss countered. Gale let his head fall forward onto his arms, face down against the table. He heard her sigh, among the voices of the other angels in the Station and a set of footsteps headed towards them.

     He always heard her before he saw her—Madge could never be stealthy or discrete, and she would’ve paraded around on Earth with her wings in full view all the time if she hadn’t been warned so sternly the first time she slipped up. He lifted his head to watch her approach, avoiding eye contact with Katniss, whose face was flushed with frustration.

      “Hi,” said Madge, looking tired. She slid into the booth beside Katniss and let her empty bag fall into a wrinkled puddle at her feet. Messenger angels didn’t have it particularly easy—they had to travel everywhere, tracking and following people until they could make contact. And then they had to convince the person to take the message, which could be especially difficult. Though to Gale, any interaction with humans seemed like a chore.

     “Hi,” Katniss said pleasantly, but Gale could feel her glaring at him.

     “What’s going on?” Madge sensed the tension as she looked between them. Katniss related their conversation to her, but she made Gale sound ridiculous, inaccurately mimicking his voice and discrediting his words. When she finished with an angry flourish, Madge nodded. “I see.”

      “He’s being ridiculous,” said Katniss.

       “I see where he’s coming from, Katniss,” Madge replied. “It’s tricky. But I think that Peeta makes you feel better, makes you feel happier, and that matters more than what’s conventional. And anyway, you’ve always been a little unconventional.”

     Katniss just shook her head. “I know, but I don’t see why it’s tricky in the first place.”

      _She really doesn’t know?_ Gale thought. He stared at her, at the blatant confusion and aggravation on her face—where Madge was terrible at staying under any sort of radar and terrible at hiding what she felt, Katniss had always been a better actress. She pretended things didn’t bother her, pretended not to have emotion, because angels weren’t really supposed to be driven by their feelings and not their objectives.

     “ _Nephilim_ , Katniss,” he said. “That’s why.”

        Romance between mortals and angels were not forbidden, because of free will and the fact that anyone was allowed to love as they wished in the Lord’s kingdom. But that didn’t mean these relationships weren’t controversial, not because angels lived forever or because it got in the way of their work, but because of the possible birth of a Nephilim child—half angel, half human. Nephilim usually inherited the benign nature and intentions of their angelic parents, but they were impressionable, vulnerable to human corruption, which made them dangerous.

     It was rare for a Nephilim to go bad, but Gale had seen it—a couple years into his work as a Warrior angel, he and his team had faced a young man in Nevada that could somehow manipulate metals and metalloids, like the silicon commonly found in sand. The Nephilim had nearly caused a desert town to fall under a vicious sandstorm in his wrath, and it had taken Three of the best to take him down. The Nephilim died, but so did one of Gale’s closest friends from their generation—all Warriors were considered siblings, but his team had been the most like brothers to him, and now he was one brother short.

     He hated that angels could die, and he hated that it had been something of holy origin that had brought Vick down instead of something from hell.

     “ _Nephilim?_ There wouldn’t…Peeta is my friend,” Katniss argued. “I’m not in love with him. That would never happen.”

     “Does he know that?” he asked.

     “Gale!” Madge lightly slapped the back of his hand, which he barely felt. But he looked to her anyway, at the wisps of blond hair curling around her face and the disappointment in her eyes. “You don’t have to be rude.”

     “He can be as rude as he wants,” said Katniss through gritted teeth. “I’m leaving.”

     Madge frowned. Gale knew that as soon as the smaller, darker angel had flitted out of the Station, he was going to be scolded for all of this—making assumptions, being judgmental and rude, and especially for hurting Katniss’s feelings. Which he’d never meant to do.

     Madge slid out of the booth so that Katniss could get out, not protesting her idea to leave at all. Gale crossed his arms over his chest and shook his wings out in a display of petulance, dislodging dove-grey feathers that fell to the floor and table.  He watched as Katniss sulked towards the entrance of the Station, which was more of a void than a door, and vanished as she reached it. Bitterly, he thought about the likelihood that she was going to see her mortal again.

     “I know you don’t trust Nephilim, Gale,” said Madge softly. “But Katniss is your _friend_. She would never…you have to trust _her_.”

      “I do trust her.”

     Madge shook her head. “Then what was all of that? Your grudge against an entire species does not determine who she can be friends with. Why do you care more about what could happen if she fell in love with him than you care about what he does for her now?” she demanded. “Gale, whether you like it or not, this is good for her. You should want her to do things that make her happy.”

     “She doesn’t need my approval anyway, Madge.”

     “She doesn’t need it, but she wanted it,” she replied tersely. “Katniss needs connections right now, because the most important one of her life has been torn. Anything that hurts the relationships she has now has serious potential to hurt her, Gale, so she wanted you to approve. She wanted you to be happy that she’s feeling better.”

     Madge’s hand lay open on the table before him, a silent invitation for him to grasp it.

     “I don’t want her to hurt,” he said, reaching for her fingers and brushing against them with his. “I don’t want anyone to get hurt. Even if she doesn’t fall for him, she only has what, fourteen more months to be his friend? What then?”

      “She’ll have a new charge, and she won’t need him anymore,” said Madge. “Trust me, and trust her.”

 

 ****

The sky had been dark for hours, but streetlamps glowed around him as he walked briskly through the park. No one was out this late, at least not here, so Peeta went unseen. His bag bumped against his leg every minute or so as he moved among the trees that looked quaint by daylight and positively nightmarish now, casting sprawling shadows everywhere he turned.

     The bridge was an unsightly chunk of concrete that arched over a babbling little brook that ran through one side of Panem City. As he reached it, Peeta thought about how something that was dropped in beyond the border would be carried out of town on the currents if you waited long enough, and he thought about what else always seemed to be just passing through.

     He didn’t know why, but there was a sense of impermanence to Katniss. He always felt like she was going to disappear, or that he was suddenly going to discover that she’d never been real in the first place. That he’d imagined it all as an attempt to cure his lonely-ish heart.

    Though he’d never thought his heart was all that lonely.

     But she didn’t have a car, and he didn’t know where she’d keep it if she did, because he had no idea where she lived. For a while he’d thought she’d taken the bus routes to get around town, but he’d never seen her near the bus stops. He thought about it as he let his bag hit the ground with a clatter of cans, about how remarkably odd it was that none of it had ever come up in conversation. Or had it, and she’d deflected the question?

     The first paint can he withdrew was brand new blue, and it rattled when he shook it, hissed when he squeezed the nozzle. Color bloomed on the cement surface before him—he hadn’t come with any particular idea of what he was going to paint, so he just sprayed a few splotches of color on his blank canvas in the hopes that he could paint something around them.

      Katniss rose up in his mind again and again as he painted, even if he tried to focus on something else, and at some point, two realizations came to him at once. The first: he was painting wings without a bird to connect them to. The second: he didn’t know Katniss’s last name. He couldn’t look her up anywhere, though if he asked at Collins High they might know—the first name _Katniss_ was one-of-a-kind. But he wasn’t going to do that…he had a feeling she wouldn’t want him to.

      Who the hell was this girl? She gave him so many feelings—confusion and awe were among them—and he barely even knew who she was. Or did he? He knew that Prim had meant more to her than you would’ve thought, as if they’d been family. He knew that she loved his father’s cheese buns and that her favorite book was about a dog who dreamed to be reborn as a human. She liked green, and Cap was right when he’d said she gave fantastic hugs. Her smile was a dream, her laugh was even better, and she ordered him around just enough that it was charming.

     Peeta sighed and looked over what had become of his painting.

     Instead of a bird, he’d sprayed a girl onto the wall, with waves of dark hair at her back that almost blended into the black tops of her wings, which were in what he thought was a relaxed-but-ready position—not all the way folded, but close to her body. A forest green dress that he had yet to detail was billowing up in the imaginary wind.

     _Oh_. He hadn’t realized until just now that he’d been painting _her_. Even though her skin tone wasn’t right, and he’d never be able to get it right with his spray paints, it was still her. He was a fucking goner.

     He finished the piece before sunup, adding value and as much texture as he could. Completed, it was one of the best paintings he’d done so far. The winged girl stood with her back to the in viewer, the mass of black, blue, and gray  feathers at her back almost dominating her form—but then you could see the graceful line of her arm, the curve of her figure beneath the dress she wore, and just the smallest sliver of her profile. She stood on something—a cliff or hill, maybe, and looked out on a lightning-lit sky.

     It was darker than his other street art—the golden bird at the school, the mermaid in the square—but he thought it was worthy of the effort. He packed up his bag, absently wiping his hands on his shirt, and checked his watch. His father and Walden would probably be at the bakery already, making dough and putting the first loaves in the oven.

   Before leaving, Peeta gave the painting another long stare, hoping it was really as good as he thought it was and that he hadn’t missed something important. A weird surge of warmth inched up his back and spread over his shoulder blades, but after tensing and relaxing the muscles there a few times, he was sure it had just been from the awkward angles he’d had to work from and that it wasn’t anything weird at all.

 ****

From the sidewalk across the street, Katniss watched through the windows as Panem City Bakery came to life. She knew she’d just seen Peeta the day before yesterday, Tuesday, and that it was really early in the morning. She knew that he wouldn’t be expecting her to show up today. But she didn’t mind—she was glad she got to watch this little corner of the world wake up.

     Mr. Mellark drove into the nearest parking lot at quarter after five, in an old minivan with three “My Kid is on the Honor Roll” bumper stickers and the logo of the bakery in the back window. He walked across the street to enter the bakery through the front, because it only had the one door, and he immediately headed to the back. Katniss then caught glimpses of movement in the second floor windows and deduced that someone lived in the apartment above the bakery—Walden, she figured.  

     As they both got to work, the sun crept up towards the horizon, spreading more and more light into the eastern sky. Katniss was invisible and content with watching as the bakery glowed from the inside. At 5:30, the weekday barista sauntered up to the door and let herself in, and Katniss could see her apron where it hung on its special hook, and she watched as the girl put it on. Walden emerged from the back room to start taking chairs off tables, and the girl started to prepare her work stations for the day.

      Cap arrived on foot just after Katniss heard the six distant chimes of the clock in the square, and ten minutes before the sun showed its face. He strutted into the bakery with his usual grin, and he wiped the tables free of anything they could’ve accumulated overnight. There was still a while before opening, however, even after he’d finished, so he ducked into the back and emerged with a large cinnamon doughnut that he stuffed his face with.

     At 6:30, Walden checked his watch and flipped the sign on the door from CLOSED to OPEN.

     Katniss was almost satisfied just having watched the morning routine play out, but there was something very big missing from the whole equation. Had Peeta overslept or something? She’d been under the impression he was always at the bakery early, and that he always stayed late, but she supposed he could make an exception if he wanted.    

      She could wait. He would’ve waited for her.

      Katniss shifted into visible-mode as she crossed the street, barely checking for cars—it was much too early for most people to be out driving anyway. When she reached the corner and pulled open the bakery door, the bells jingled to announce her entrance. The girl at the counter was the only one currently out front, as the two elder Mellark brothers had ducked into the kitchen before she’d reached the door.

     “Good morning,” said the girl, and Katniss smiled pleasantly at her. She fished her angelic credit card out of her pocket as she walked over to the counter.

    “Good morning to you as well,” she said. She looked briefly over the menu before deciding. “Can I have an iced coffee with almond milk, please?”

     “Of course, Katniss,” the barista replied, and then she paused as Katniss stared at her. “Sorry, you’re just here a lot. And Peeta and Cap adore you, so of course…”

      “It’s all right,” Katniss said. She slid the card towards the girl.

      “My name is Annie, by the way. The other girl, her name is Delly,” she said. “I wanted to get our names embroidered on these dumb aprons, but Mr. Mellark never got around to it.”

     “Well, good morning, Annie,” Katniss couldn’t help but smile at the girl. She took it as encouragement and continued to babble on as she slid the card through the scanner and printed up the receipt. Then she frowned. “What?” Katniss asked.

     Annie looked up, her eyes wide and stunned. Her lips moved, but no sound came out.

     “Annie,” Katniss said gently. Annie furrowed her brow and looked closer at the credit card.

     “Don’t worry,” she finally said, leaving the receipt and card on the table and walking off to prepare Katniss’s drink. “It’s nothing. Just something…um…”

      When angels used their cards, it manipulated little parts of people’s thoughts. Nothing major, and only enough to keep the angels undercover. Annie was struggling with that, because she’d found something amiss when she wasn’t supposed too, and now the powers that the card had were trying to smother that notion. Katniss wondered if it had been the fact that there was nothing really on the card but her name in silver, or that she had always used the card here and never had to sign the receipt: only Prim could ever really point out what was weird about it, because of her connection with Katniss, but she’d have to put a great deal of concentration into thinking about it.

     “Well, thank you,” Katniss said when Annie handed her the plastic cup with the straw already poked through the lid. The girl just nodded and Katniss moved to the corner to wait.

     Peeta showed up a few minutes later, pushing open the bakery door. “Annie, I really need a coffee,” he said, looking winded. “I woke up late and sprinted here.”

      Katniss looked him over. His clothes were unrumpled, his hair combed, but his face was flushed from running through the warm August morning. But his hands were lightly stained with green, like he’d tried to wash it off but hadn’t really scrubbed, and his light blue shirt had a long, dark stain up the side. Whatever he’d been up to, it didn’t look like he’d been sleeping in. She didn’t say anything, though. She just waved, catching his attention and causing a grin to spread across his face. He maneuvered towards her and plopped down in the other chair.

     “Good morning, you,” he said. “What are you doing here so early?”

     She shrugged. “I was awake.”

     Angels didn’t need to sleep. They didn’t need to eat either, but they did anyway, so Katniss had always wondered if any of her kind tried to sleep, too. She’d never bothered with it.

      Peeta grinned at her, and then he had to retrieve his coffee, but he came back immediately. As he settled in, drinking the dark liquid from a ceramic mug, Katniss told him about her argument with Gale—she didn’t say what it was about, and let him assume it had been last night in a diner or bar somewhere instead of in the Station, but she gave him some of the basics.

     “He sounds protective,” Peeta observed when she finished. “But like he can’t help but be an asshole about it.”

     “He’s...we aggravate each other often, but this is the worst it’s been.”

     “Sounds like a brotherly thing,” said Peeta. “I mean, my brothers and I pick on each other and seriously piss each other off sometimes, but in the end it’s just because we love each other. Gale probably just doesn’t want you to get hurt—what did you argue about? A guy or something?”

     “Something like that,” Katniss said, avoiding his eyes.

     They talked about Peeta instead from then on. He talked about the summer reading that he’d now finished, and how much he was dreading the start of the new school year come September. He told a story about Annie and Delly and him going to a movie and being the only ones in the theater, and he told another about the time when Cap went on a spinning carnival ride and puked all over Delly, whom he’d had a crush on at the time.

     “Walden was like twelve, and he was technically in charge of all of us, but when we all got off the ride and Delly was covered in vomit…” Peeta stopped to laugh. “His face was priceless. He at least made it to a trash can before barfing too. It was gross, and it was humiliating for pretty much all of us, so I was the only one who laughed. Which kind of got me a little bit grounded.”

     “Poor _Delly_.”

     “Right?” he shook his head, smiling. “It’s a wonder she still hangs out with us.”

     No, it wasn’t. It was a wonder that Peeta had so few friends, when he was as charming as he was. He’d never want to use his looks to get friends, but Katniss would’ve thought that it’d never come to that. He was brilliant with words, and with frosting, and with paint, and he just exuded friendliness.

     Around lunch, they had cheese buns, and then Katniss took a few more to go.

     Gale was insane if he thought she was going to give up this friendship and everything it entailed, from the long talks and companionship to the free food. Peeta was important to her now, because he’d helped her up from the damp, dark place her mind had lived in after Prim died and into something new.

     It wasn’t like before, when Prim was still with her, but it was like the twilight before the dawn, like this morning before the bakery had opened. He was leading her into the daylight again—she still had to take the steps towards it, and he wasn’t going to hold her hand, but he was there showing her the way.

     “Like a lantern,” she said aloud as she walked along the streets of Panem City, lost in reflective thought. As she wandered into the park, memories of Prim as a little girl blurred together in her mind because of how quickly they all came—she took a moment to try and sort through them, and when that was unsuccessful, she just closed her eyes and focused on one.

     A little blond girl with pigtails and chubby cheeks peered down at her from the platform above the bigger slide, a green tube that that sharply turned before it ended. Prim’s mother was perched on a bench with a book in her hand, and she had no idea that her daughter was about to face her fear of the green slide—which was really dark on the inside, and Prim hated the dark.

      Katniss remembered Prim’s wide eyes and her hands reaching through the metal bars on the railing around her—Katniss could barely reach, the slide was that high. She’d asked Prim if she was sure a thousand times, and she’d always said yes, but the way she gripped her Guardian’s hand suggested otherwise. Something occurred to Katniss then. She let go of Prim and headed for the ladder-like mechanism that would get her up there, and she climbed up easily and crawled through a short yellow tunnel to get to her charge.

     They went down the slide together, and when Prim went to go by herself, she wasn’t scared anymore. In a few short months, she’d stopped being afraid of the dark altogether.

     Katniss felt the memory as if it was yesterday, but it lifted her spirits instead of dragging them down. Even happy memories made her want to cry at least a little, an urge which she usually suppressed, but now for the first time she didn’t really feel that way. She watched little kids of the present play on the same equipment that Prim had for so many years, and she couldn’t help but feel happy as they chased each other and giggled and gave her toothy smiles as she passed—it was beautiful.

     She walked on, through the trees, dodging a pair of joggers. She was watching them run past her as she app roached the little stream where some older kids were wading through the water with their jeans rolled up and their shoes abandoned on the banks. She smiled at them first, but then something green where green should not have been caught her eye.

     It was street art, obviously by the same culprit as the other pieces popping up around town, but there was something about this one…

     No, that couldn’t be…

     “Shit,” she said, the word falling past her lips for the first time ever. The shade of blue in the angel’s wings and in the sky matched the paint stain on Peeta’s shirt. And the colors and patterns of the feathers were just like Katniss’s.

     Peeta was a seasoned vandal. He had painted her on the side of a bridge. He had painted her with _wings_ on the side of a bridge.

     Katniss couldn’t decide what she found the most shocking.


	5. Chapter 5

_**Chapter Five** _

_"An angel can illuminate the thought and mind of man by strengthening the power of vision..."  -St.Thomas Aquinas_

* * *

 

 

Peeta was familiar with loneliness. He’d felt it when his mother died, when his father worked harder than ever and his brothers had retreated into themselves. And then when they fought with each other over the littlest things, and he’d had to take the role of peacemaker and comforter, with no one offering to comfort _him_.

     He had long since forgiven Cap and Walden. Grief made a mess of everything, but the fact that they loved one another had eventually made it right.

     Years later, he felt it again, in the strange absence-of-presence around him. Usually, someone was always there—he could pound on his bedroom wall to communicate with Cap on the other side, or he could call Walden’s apartment, or he could spend a few hours with Katniss and wonder if she would ever regain the tranquility, the softness, the purposefulness that he’d seen in her when they first met. Even when he didn’t reach out, he could feel their availability as if it were tangible, like the way you can feel it when someone enters the room, even if you can’t see them or hear them.

     Now, he reached out, and there was nothing. There was Dad, right through the kitchen door, but he was Peeta’s father. He was an adult, not a peer.

     Peeta remembered helping Cap pack for college—being an athlete, he had to go early—and then when he couldn’t bring himself to help him unpack at his dorm, staying in the car and reading instead. About a dog and a racecar driver and how they became best friends.

      He remembered standing at the door of Walden’s apartment above the bakery, watching his oldest brother throw things into a suitcase for a last minute vacation with his girlfriend’s family. Peeta had listened to his worries about what they’d think of him, and had given him advice on what clothes he should pack (it was basic advice: nothing with rips or holes). Now, Walden didn’t have cell service for the next four days.

     Annie was there, but she had spent the day with her boyfriend at some festival somewhere. Delly was touring universities, and he kept getting Facebook alerts every time she posted a picture.

     Katniss was nowhere. He hadn’t seen her in over a week, and it was like the months following Prim’s death all over again—as though Katniss had never existed, or at least that she had vanished from the face of the planet. She didn’t answer his calls or his texts, and he still didn’t know where she lived. He waited forty minutes for her to show when he stopped by Prim’s grave with flowers every couple of days, and he still didn’t see her.

     Was it something he’d said? Or was there something worse going on, something that had nothing to do with him and everything to do with her wellbeing?

     Peeta’s lonely mind couldn’t stay quiet. It flitted between Cap’s empty bedroom at home and Walden’s trip and Katniss’s radio silence like it was trying to play pinball but couldn’t escape one small area in a corner. He had just closed the bakery and was trying to clean, but kept spacing out.

     So he sat down in a booth by the window and pulled out his book, reading about the dog and his best friend again, but now the dog was old—not a puppy anymore—and there was a daydream-like sequence in which the dog just wanted to run _faster_ just like he always wanted his racecar driver to drive _faster._ And the owner said “You can go,” and Peeta felt tears sting his eyes, even though he knew it was going to happen before he finished the first chapter.

    And then there was someone standing outside the window, tapping lightly to get his attention.

     Peeta turned to see Katniss, lit by the warm light of the bakery and casting a long, misshapen shadow on the pavement behind her. She didn’t smile at him, and his hopes that their friendship wasn’t in jeopardy plummeted. But her gaze was not scathing, either. She looked more like she didn’t know how to feel.

     He gestured towards the door, indicating that he would let her in. They split apart there and met each other at the front of the bakery, as he pulled open the glass door with its jingling bell. His father heard, and when he poked his head out of the kitchen a moment later, as the two of them were standing awkwardly by the door, Dad just nodded and disappeared from sight again.

      “Katniss,” said Peeta, finally breaking the silence.

     “Peeta.”

     He rubbed his forehead. “Ugh. I don’t know what I did. Tell me what I did wrong.”

     Katniss didn’t answer, and for some reason, it made him angry. He felt heat in his cheeks and in his blood, and the longer she stared at him blankly, the harder it was to contain. He turned and slammed down the book in his hand, and being paperback, it made only a soft, rather unsatisfying sound when it hit the nearest table. Peeta growled and looked back to Katniss.

     “You can’t do that sort of thing! You can’t just check out without telling me _why_ ,” he said. Now, emotion colored her face—confusion, shock, disbelief. He didn’t pay it any mind. “I had so much to deal with, Katniss, but on top of that I had to worry about _you_. Whether I fucked up, whether I chased you away…whether you were okay or not…it has been a hell of a week, and the one person I wanted to talk to about it wasn’t returning my messages. Imagine what I thought. _Think about it_.”  

     “Peeta…”

     She was staring at something behind him, and he turned. The book lying on the table. She had been staring at it since he’d thrown it down in his frustration. Her _favorite_ book.

     He couldn’t stay angry. He had never had it in him to stay angry long, but when she lifted her eyes to look at him again, Peeta felt it fading faster than it ever had. She was so full of conflicting feelings, so full of secrets, but so full of wonderful things too, and he’d been terrified of losing her. He’d acted out because he was so fucking _scared_.

      “I’m sorry,” he said, gazing steadily back at her. “I’m sorry I yelled. That was unnecessary.”

     “No…I understand,” she replied, nodding slowly. “It was selfish of me to disappear without telling you. I’m sorry I’ve caused you such distress, Peeta. But I couldn’t bring myself to speak to you.”

      “ _Why?_ ”

      She paused, chewing on her lip. He really had been worried, and with the little information he had, he couldn’t ask around. He couldn’t know if she had skipped town, or if something worse had happened to her—something he couldn’t even bear to think about. Now, he was so incredibly glad that she was there, and he deeply regretted his outburst.

     “Why did you paint me on the bridge, Peeta?”

     No. How did she know?

     “I…I didn’t paint the bridge. And it’s not you,” he spluttered. “I mean. Um, I don’t think it’s you, after all, you don’t have wings. Silly.”

      “Peeta,” she whispered. “I know it was you.”

     His shoulders fell in defeat. She wasn’t going to let him wiggle out of it—her accusation was true. He had been the artist, just as he’d been the artist of all the other murals around town. And he had painted her, even though he didn’t plan it that way.

     “I didn’t mean to. It just happened,” he admitted. “You were on my mind, and then you were there, on the bridge.”

      “With wings?”

      “Yeah, I don’t know where that came from. The wings came first, and then I put you there…” he shook his head, because he didn’t know what had possessed him to do it. It should’ve occurred to him that she would see it, and it should’ve occurred to him that she was clever enough to figure it out. He’d been covered in paint that morning, so of course Katniss would attribute it to him. “Did you…did you like it?”

     “It’s not exactly legal,” she said.

      “That’s not what I asked.”

      “Okay, fine,” she smiled. Finally. He’d been waiting. “Yes, I liked it. It’s _beautiful_ , Peeta.”

       _Not as beautiful as you,_ he wanted to say, but he just grinned triumphantly at her. He wasn’t ready to tell her, and she wasn’t ready to know. But he figured that someday, someday soon, it would be the right time.

 ****

They moved to sit together in their usual spot: the armchairs in the corner. Peeta picked up the book as they walked over, and set it on his lap when he sat down. She still seemed shocked that he had it, that he’d gone out and bought a copy because she’d mentioned it. And she looked even more surprised when he held it up and said, “I’m almost done. It’s really great.”

     “Oh, yeah, I know,” she said. “I cry every time. Prim never understood why—stories about dogs almost always end the same way, she said…oh no, I’m not spoiling it, am I?”

      “No, like you said, it was expected. Plus, I was just about to start the epilogue when you tapped,” he said, setting the book down again on the table. Katniss nodded and started to talk about it, how she identified with the story in certain ways and how much she loved the way it was told. It seemed to thrill her to be able to talk about it with someone who had read it and who had really enjoyed it, though not as much as she had. It even sparked the light in her eyes that had always been there when she talked about her happiest memories with Prim.

     Before she’d showed up today, he’d felt alone even though he really wasn’t. Now, her presence swelled, and he didn’t miss Cap and Walden as much anymore. The now empty bedroom next to his didn’t hurt, and the thought that Walden was out of reach just seemed nice for him—an escape of sorts. His friends were still there (even though they weren’t there, in the bakery, right this minute) and Katniss was talking to him again. Everything was right with the world.

     “ _You’ve got it so bad, little brother,”_ Cap would say on the phone tonight, when Peeta called. He could hear it already. But really, he was absolutely fine with it. He did have it bad. Peeta didn’t worship the ground she walked on, he didn’t think she was this divine, flawless person. She was just a girl, but that didn’t stop him from being completely taken with her.

     And there was still so much he didn’t know about her, so much more to learn and fall in love with.

     “Why did you start…with the um…murals?” Katniss asked him, careful not to say “vandalism” or “graffiti” because she knew that it wasn’t like that.

     “Well, the one on the school steps was first…and I kind of just continued. They bring color to Panem City, I think,” he said. “My mother did the same thing in my childhood home—she was confined to simple murals, like vines climbing up my wall and a cartoon monkey, and sports equipment in Cap’s room. I remember helping her make a heart from all of our handprints on the living room wall. No doubt it’s been painted over now, by the people who bought it from us, but…”

     “That sounds wonderful,” she said. “Is that why you got into painting in the first place?”

     “A little. I really loved it then, and playing with watercolors and fingerpaints for hours was my idea of a perfect day. She liked it too, and was always so happy to see what I’d made…it didn’t matter if it was just some smears on paper, Mom loved it.”

     Peeta smiled, even though he was thinking back on the first time she wasn’t proud of his work. He’d painted her with his watercolors and left it to dry on the counter, and she had been confused when he’d said it was her and insisted that it wasn’t. Things went downhill from there, really—she didn’t remember things that were just said, she read about foreign affairs and thought it would all come down to nuclear war, and she muttered to herself more frequently and grew more agitated and confused and paranoid. Within the year Mom didn’t live with them anymore. She was too sick.

     She came back for a year when he was ten, but had to return to the hospital after a while, staying there another sixteen months before she was fit to live with her family again. He remembered the way she drifted around the house in those last few years, hating every ounce of weight she gained as a side effect of her meds, complaining about headaches. He remembered reading to her when she didn’t want to open her eyes to the searing light of day, and he remembered when she was comfortable with telling him she loved him again.  

     “Peeta…if you don’t mind me asking…” Katniss began, and he knew what she was going to say. And she knew that he knew, so she didn’t bother finishing.

     “How she died?” he asked. He was used to the question. “She was sick, and she stopped taking her medication. It was tough for us, but even tougher for her—a battle against herself every day. Eventually, I guess, it was too much.”

     Katniss didn’t press for more information. She didn’t ask for the details: the diagnosis, the exact cause of death. He was glad that she didn’t. She didn’t even say she was sorry; she just nodded and touched his hand.

     “Can I show you something?” he asked.

     “What?”

      “Just…come on. Wait here while I tell my dad I’m leaving, and then I’ll take you, all right?” Peeta said, and Katniss smiled softly at him as he got up. She stayed put as he wandered to the kitchen, briefly speaking to his father, and was in the exact same place when he returned to the chairs by the fireplace. “Okay, let’s go.”

     Somehow, it seemed even darker now than it had been when she’d arrived. And then he realized that almost an hour had passed, and it was surprising to him how quickly it had gone by. He smiled dreamily at Katniss as she stood on the sidewalk with him, waiting as closed the door slowly behind him and began to fish through his pockets with the other hand.

     “The sky is nice and clear tonight,” she said as he found the car keys and held them up. Her head tilted back, gazing up into the night. Her breath caught as her eyes roved across the dark blanket of the sky, taking in the glitter sprinkled across it. “I haven’t really looked at the stars since Prim died,” Katniss whispered. “And I didn’t realize I missed them until just now.”

     He let his own gaze wander upward, and he could see what she meant. It was a nice night. But Peeta’s heart was an obsessive thing, it seemed, and insisted that the stars were nothing next to what was right in front of him. And so he looked at her instead, while she marveled at the wonders that she hadn’t appreciated in months. And he waited.

      When her eyes returned to him, she blushed, realizing he’d been staring. He smiled and reached for her, intending to guide her with a hand on her shoulder, and not expecting it at all when her hand folded into his. He itched to weave their fingers together, to pull her closer, but instead he just led her across the street to where the family minivan was parked.

     It was embarrassing as hell to drive her around in this, but he didn’t have a choice, unless they wanted to walk. But he felt like where they were going was too far in the dark.

     Katniss took the passenger seat and buckled up, but even after she was safely secured she gripped the seatbelt with two hands as it wasn’t enough. As if her nerves wouldn’t allow her to let go.

     “Are you okay?” he asked.

     “Yes. Fine. I’ve…I’ve just been walking everywhere…”

     She hadn’t been in car since the accident, either. He wasn’t sure whether to feel proud that she’d made so much progress today or guilty that he’d unintentionally pushed her into doing something she wasn’t ready for yet.

      Katniss studied his face, furrowing her brow. Her grip loosened.

     “Oh, no, it’s okay. I’m all right,” she assured him. “I really want to see what you wanted to show me.”

     Peeta nodded and started the engine. The whole way there, he watched her out the corner of his eye, making sure she really was okay with this. He watched her expression as he turned into the library parking lot and parked the car across three empty spaces, not worried about hogging it because the library had closed hours ago and the only other vehicle in the lot was Wiress’s little red Smart Car.

     She was working overtime again, and if Peeta hadn’t been with Katniss, he would’ve gone inside to keep her company like he sometimes did when he was in the area. But he could do that another day.

     The two of them climbed out of the van and Peeta led the way, rounding the building just ahead of her. As they stepped into the brightness of the outdoor lights on this side of the library, Katniss squinted at him, and he beamed proudly.

     “Don’t look at me. I’m not the piece of art here,” he said, and he swept his arm in a grand ta-da sort of gesture, directing her attention to the tall stone wall of the library. From the top of the wall to the bottom, extremely oversized flowers seemed to gracefully drift towards the ground. Peeta had tried his best to make them look real, arranging the petals to shift with the imaginary breeze, and making sure the stems curved naturally.

     “This is the only one that’s actually legal. A commission,” he said. “Wiress—that’s the head librarian, and she’s in charge of all the beautification of the grounds too—paid for all my supplies and the scaffolding I had to use to get up there, and she gave me a hundred bucks to paint whatever I wanted.”

     “Peeta, that’s amazing.”

     She looked at it like she didn’t believe that it was just a frozen image on stone. His heart swelled with pride for his work.

     “I made my mom a dandelion crown once, at school, and when I gave it to her she gushed about how much she loved them…though now I think it was just for my benefit,” he gestured to one of the yellow buds. “But I felt like immortalizing that memory all the same. And the blue and pink ones? They’re carnations. Her favorite. It was only fitting that I paint them on her favorite place.”

     “Your mother…she’s the one you visit at the cemetery. It’s her you bring flowers for.”

     “Yeah,” he said. “I used to talk to her too, like you did with Prim. I still tell her when something big happens, like Cap going away to college, or when I do an art show. And I always tell her I love her, and that I miss her.”

      Katniss looked at him curiously. “What if she can’t hear you from Heaven?”

     “Is it really so far away?” he asked, smirking. Katniss nodded seriously. “Well, if she couldn’t hear me…that would be all right, actually. Because she already knows.”

     When Mom was sick, she didn’t always believe what people said. She didn’t always understand. Even Dad had trouble reaching her a lot of the time. But when her sons said they loved her, she knew it was the truth. It was like she could _feel_ it.

     And he was pretty damned sure that wherever she was now, she could still feel it.

 ****

Katniss watched the bakery the next morning. Peeta arrived in the van with his father this time, and Walden was not there to help open up, but other than that everything went according to routine. When Annie strolled in 5:30, Katniss couldn’t help but groan—she had to wait an hour before the bakery opened, maybe more today because they were understaffed.

     What she hadn’t realized when she’d gotten there was that she’d made herself visible. She had spending so much time that way, even before the accident, and she didn’t even notice when she turned the “see me” switch on anymore. So when Annie spotted her and waved, she shouldn’t have been surprised.

     The girl called her from across the street, her dimpled smile bright. “What are you doing here so early?” she asked Katniss, who shrugged in response. “Well, you can come in! I’m sure the boys wouldn’t mind.”

     “I don’t know…”

     Annie shook her head and beckoned her over, and Katniss caved. She jogged across the street to join the barista on the sidewalk, waiting as she looked for the right key to open the bakery door. When she found it, Annie turned it in the lock and pushed the door open with a flourish. “Morning, boys!” she shouted into the bakery. “Peeta, I found something pretty on the sidewalk. Come look.”

     The kitchen door swung to reveal Peeta, with scruffy morning bedhead that was caked with flour. He grinned and maneuvered around the tables to get to Katniss, pulling her into a hug as soon as he reached her. She hugged back, and Annie huffed.

     “You’ve known me longer, you know,” she said when Peeta and Katniss drew apart. “ _I_ should get the first hug.”

     “By that logic, you’re not first…you’re after Delly, who’s after Cap, who’s after…”

     “Okay, I get it,” said Annie, laughing. She had already reached the counter and was lifting her apron from the hook. “Are we excited for the day ahead, Mellark?”

     “We’re a few Mellarks short,” Peeta replied solemnly. “So, no, not exactly.”

     Annie gave him a sympathetic smile, and Katniss tried to give one that matched. Peeta didn’t move from where he stood, a breath away, and even though he was bummed about the absence of his brothers he managed to give her a genuine smile.

     As they got back to work, Katniss insisted that she wanted to help, even though they thought that she shouldn’t have to. And then, even after they said she should just sit down and relax, she started taking the chairs down and putting the napkin dispensers and bowls of sugar packets in place. Peeta came out of the kitchen to find her asking Annie where she could find the spray bottle and cloth to wipe down the tables, and the admiration in his eyes was as potent as hers had been last night, when he’d shown her the library mural.

     “I love a hard worker,” he said as Annie fetched the cleaning supplies from their designated cabinet under the counter. Katniss took them from her hands, but she didn’t start working—she watched Peeta’s graceful movements toward her until he stopped two feet away. “Maybe we should hire you.”

    “Maybe you should,” Annie put in, leaning over the counter with her chin in her hands. “She already has a better work ethic than Cap, and she doesn’t even work here yet.”

     Peeta just smiled and nodded, barely listening. His hands were buried in his pockets, his cheeks flushed pink from hard work in the warmth of the kitchen…or was it from something else entirely?

     “I…I can’t replace Cap,” she said. “He’s so gregarious and charming, and he brings something joyful to this place. I can’t do that. I’m sullen and stoic and my people skills are really, really rusty…”

     “Katniss, stop,” Peeta cut her off. “You clearly have no idea the effect you have on people. Your very presence is calming and sweetens everything…it would be a change for the better, I think. Cap is big and loud and annoying.”

      “Peeta is right, you know,” added Annie. “Though he seems to be thinking with his goopy, sappy heart again instead of his brain. Ultimately, it’s Mr. Mellark’s decision. But he’s only heard good things about you, so if you want the job, you’re probably a shoe-in.”

     “I don’t need to be paid,” Katniss said. 

      “Why…”

     “I don’t _want_ to be paid,” she rephrased. “But spending time here and helping out? That would be…” she looked at Peeta, his blue eyes shining. Something in her stomach stirred. “Nice. It would be really nice.”

     “I’ll tell my father,” Peeta said excitedly, spinning on his heel and rushing into the kitchen, already launching words at his father before the door even swung closed behind him. Almost as soon as he was out of sight and mostly out of earshot, Annie’s phone went off.

     “My boyfriend is stopping in on his way to work,” she said, and she tossed Katniss her keys. “Can you open up the door for him? He’ll be here in like, two minutes.”

      Katniss complied, walking up to the door and unlocking it, but leaving the CLOSED side of the sign facing out. Apparently, they made a lot of exceptions when it came to that sign—she’d already been in the bakery twice when it was closed, and now Annie’s boyfriend was coming, which might even have been a regular occurrence.

     When she returned the keys to their owner by letting them clatter onto the counter beside the cash register, and Annie grinned at her. And then, almost directly following the jingle of the keys, the bell above the door rang behind Katniss’s back. Annie’s expression shifted from grateful to loving, from friendly to totally enamored in a half-second, and Katniss turned her head to get a better look at the object of Annie’s affections.

     _Impossible._

    “Finnick?” she choked on his name. The tall, bronze-haired figure in the doorway didn’t look surprised to see her at all.  “What are you…?”

     “What are _you_ doing here?” he asked, smirking at her. “Don’t you know? The bakery is _closed_.”

      She wanted to hit him. She wanted to hug him. It had been years since she’d last seen him, the day before their assignments were given, and even now that she’d processed his presence it still seemed impossible. Annie’s boyfriend was a Guardian— _her_ Guardian, no doubt—and he was the notorious Prankster angel, with his wild, rebellious streak and reliably egotistic demeanor. The most annoying of all of Katniss’s brothers and sisters, but also her favorite.

     Annie looked like she’d known all along, and Katniss realized that she probably had—at least since the weird moment with the credit card, which she must’ve told Finnick about. And Finnick would’ve told her anything she wanted to know from there. Guardians never liked to withhold information, especially not that one.

      “What, aren’t you happy to see me?” asked Finnick after a moment of awkward silence. He spread his arms out, as if expecting her to embrace him. And she might’ve, if she hadn’t been panicking.

      When the kitchen door opened, the cause of her distress strolled in with a muffin in one hand and the same grin on his face that he’d had when he left. Her heart swelled just a little bit in happiness at the sight of him, but the gravity of the current situation didn’t let her feel it for long—how was she going to explain this to Peeta? That she knew Finnick already, as well as anyone could, because she’d grown up with him?

       “Dude, you’re hooking up with my sister?” Finnick said, laughter in his voice as he strode up behind her and clasped a hand over her shoulder. “Half-sister,” he added, tugging on her dark braid. “If that wasn’t clear already, with the lack of resemblance and all.”

     “What?” Peeta froze in his tracks.

     “I would’ve told you if I’d known,” Katniss hurried to say, swatting Finnick away. “But neither of you ever mentioned him by name.”

      Nobody said anything to dispute the “hooking up” accusation. _Shit._ Katniss almost never swore, and she definitely never did it out loud, but right now her brain was cursing up a storm.

      “And I thought Annie had told you, even if Katniss hadn’t,” Finnick added. “How fuckin’ weird is this, man? And you,” he turned to Katniss. “You live under the same goddamned roof as I do, and I don’t know about this? Your sneaky has reached new levels.”

     “You’re the one who always snuck out of your room for happy hour at the Station,” she grumbled. “Remember?”

      “And you’re the one who snitched, of course,” he volleyed back, tugging on her braid again. “How could I forget?”

      “You really _are_ siblings,” Peeta said, looking between them, his jaw still slightly slack from the initial shock. “So…it’s Katniss Odair, then?”

     “No…” Katniss didn’t know what to say once she remembered that she had to have a last name, and now that she couldn’t use Finnick’s, she had no idea what to say. How had she avoided this conversation until now?

     “It’s Grace,” Finnick supplied. “Katniss Grace.”

     “Katniss Grace,” Peeta repeated, almost reverently. He seemed content, now that he’d had some time to process. “I like the sound of that.”


	6. Chapter 6

_**Chapter Six** _

_“I saw the tracks of angels in the earth: the beauty of heaven walking by itself on the world..." – Petrarch_

* * *

 

 

Mags Odair lived just down the block from Annie’s family in a little blue house that she surrounded in flower beds. It looked almost like a cottage, Katniss thought as she stood at the edge of the path.

     She walked the rest of the way to the door, raising her hand to knock when she saw that there was no bell. But Finnick beat her to it, swinging it open and ushering her inside before she could touch her knuckles to the whitewashed wood.

     “Afternoon, sis,” he said. “Welcome home.”

     He looked like he had that morning, with his tousled hair and ever-present smirk. He even wore his uniform still—he worked at the hardware store a block or so away from the bakery, and Katniss wondered how she’d never noticed him walking around town in the bright green polo they made him wear.

     “Home,” she repeated, testing the way the word felt on her lips. She’d had a home before—the smooth-walled living rooms of Heaven, the sixth floor apartment in the building that was nestled between the commercial hubbub of downtown and the cozier residential sections of Panem City. But those were homes she’d never have again, and this was new and different and strange.

     Finnick saw the look on her face nodded understandingly, even though he probably didn’t understand. Most likely, he wouldn’t lose Annie until she was well into old age. Most likely, they’d end up married with Nephilim babies or adopted babies that they’d get to see grow up. Katniss had always thought she’d get to see Prim’s wedding and her children and her _life_ , but now she couldn’t.

     “Katniss,” he said, putting a hand on her shoulder. “Come on, come meet Grandma Mags.”

     Before he’d left the bakery earlier, Finnick and Katniss stepped outside to talk privately—they put their names and numbers in each other’s phones and talked about meeting this afternoon at the house that they both “lived in” with their “grandmother”. He had talked about Mags with a smile on his face, briefly telling the story of how they’d met and become fake-relatives on the same day. Apparently, she’d been struggling with fixing one of her flowerbeds, and he popped in to help her out. In doing so, he’d spotted the cross around her neck and the angel statue in her garden, subsequently entrusting her with his secret. Thus, his cover story was born and he was free to go to school and publicly date Annie and have something resembling a normal human life.

     Now, as Katniss walked into the living room situated at the front of the house, she realized that Mags wasn’t at all like she’d pictured. There was no sweater set, no bun at the back of her head, no practical, respectable footwear—instead there was a mess of wild gray curls and bare feet and the faint sound of indie music in the background. Mags wore a colorful dress and a scarf in her hair, and she smiled when she looked up from the baby hat she was knitting. The living room had plain white couches embellished with a lot of mismatched throw pillows, a huge rug with swirling patterns across it, and plants in little baskets that hung from hooks on the walls. There was a stereo on one end of the room but no television, and instead of turning on the light on the ceiling, Mags had drawn back her flimsy linen curtains to let in the sunlight.

     “Hello,” she said, getting to her feet and crossing the room to greet Katniss. “Margaret Odair, but you can call me Mags. Or Grandma Mags. Finn does.”

     “I’m Katniss,” Katniss said, smiling shyly. “I can’t thank you enough for this, ma’am. It really is wonderful of you to provide lodging and a cover story for the both of us.”

     Katniss briefly explained that she’d be around for the next year, but that she would be leaving because of reassignment and not because of college plans, like Finnick, who would attend whichever school that Annie did. Mags expressed condolences for the loss of Prim, like everyone did, but she was so gentle and lovely and grandmotherly that Katniss didn’t feel sad or irritated because of it.

     “Finnick, could you show Katniss her room, dear?” asked Mags when introductions and small talk had all been made. She retreated back to her seat on the couch, picking up the baby hat. Finnick nodded, still standing in the doorway. Katniss joined him in the hall.

      “Well, that’s the kitchen,” he said, pointing out another open archway to their right. She followed as he continued down the hallway, gesturing to each door. The first one on the left was Mags’s room, and the first on the right was his. “It used to belong to her son,” he explained, “and it’s a mess right now, so you probably don’t want to see it.”

     “Typical Finnick,” she teased. He smiled over his shoulder and walked the few remaining steps to the end of the hall—the house was just a tad bigger than what it looked like from the front, allowing for the third bedroom and the bathroom at the very end of the hall.

     “This is yours,” said Finnick. “Mags has two daughters, and this belonged to the younger one—the oldest was already out of the house by the time they moved here.” He nudged the door open with his foot and stepped aside so she could enter. It was small, but there was enough space to move around quite a bit, between the few pieces of furniture. The bed dominated the space, a full-sized mattress on a frame that doubled as a dresser, with two rows of drawers on the bottom. The quilt had flowers and butterflies in pinks and purples and greens, and the pillowcases were green with white polka dots. White butterfly decals adorned the wall that it was pushed up against, a large, ornate K painted in the center. There was also a desk by the window, with bookshelves on the wall to either side. The closet was empty save for one blouse and a pair of slippers.

      “It’s lovely,” said Katniss, turning to look at Finnick. “The K is a nice coincidence.”

      “Her name was Katherine,” he said. “She was the middle child, left the house early to move to LA and become an actress. Which caused a rift to grow between her and Mags, and eventually they didn’t talk at all anymore…Katherine died a few months before I started living here, in an apartment fire or something. She didn’t really have kids, but, you know how Heaven works—I needed the story to change, so it did.”

     “Convenient,” said Katniss.

    “It was. And now you…Katniss Grace. Born 1997, a year before me. You would’ve gone to your dad after our mother died, but you moved here at the beginning of the semester because he wanted to leave the country for a business endeavor and you didn’t,” Finnick said, crossing his arms and leaning against the doorframe. “Funny how lying is a sin, but as angels among men, we have to lie every day.”

     “Heaven likes to be a mystery,” she replied. “If too many people know too many things, what’s the point of religion, the point of _faith_?”

     “Right,” he said. “Exactly why we keep ourselves hidden.”

     “Except you and me.”

     Finnick nodded. “You and me are different.”

     She didn’t get to ask _how_ they were different, or _why_ they were different, before he walked out of the room. And she didn’t see him for the rest of the day.

****

 Katniss spent the night there, rereading _The Art of Racing in the Rain_ for what was probably the fourth or fifth time. It was, however, the first time since Prim died—she’d only read articles in magazines and the occasional happy, funny, chick lit novel since then. This book, although it was her favorite, had so much loss in it, and was connected to so many memories, that she couldn’t bear to read it before tonight.

     But talking about it with Peeta the evening before had reminded her of how much she loved the story. And as she made her way through the text, re-familiarizing herself, she wondered about Peeta’s reactions to this line or that piece of dialogue, or if he felt the same way about a certain scene that she’d always enjoyed.

     She stopped around midnight, about halfway through the book, because she could no longer focus on the words. Her brain was somewhere else, remembering the way _Katniss Grace_ had sounded so foreign and weird when Finnick said it but so perfect on Peeta’s lips. Remembering Prim playing with a golden retriever in the park when she was six or seven. Remembering the flowers in Prim’s Rapunzel painting and the flowers at her funeral and the flowers that Peeta showed her on the library wall.

     Katniss put the book on the desk and pushed away from it, the carpet resisting the movement of the wheels on her chair. She didn’t know what else she should do—there wasn’t a computer in the room, and her phone was the flippy, pay-as-you-go kind that only had a few boring preprogramed games on it. She could read one of Katherine’s old magazines or books, but she wasn’t sure she’d be able to focus on them either.

     She padded out of the room and down the hallway, careful not to step on the one board that creaked on her way to the bedroom earlier in the day. Finnick’s door was ajar, and bluish light spilled onto the hardwood from inside. Katniss nudged the door all the way open, unsure of what she’d find.

     Finnick was sitting in a blue beanbag chair in front of a small television set, game controller in hand as two cartoony characters battled it out on the screen. He was wearing enormous headphones, blocking out the world around him as he focused on the game—Katniss couldn’t tell who he was playing as, but judging by the way he punched the air in victory a moment later, he’d been the winner. Princess Peach.

     Katniss treaded carefully into the darkened bedroom, dodging the clothes he’d tossed on the ground, including his green hardware store polo. Now he was wearing a faded blue t-shirt instead. Despite the lack of light, she could tell that this room was lived in, with all the piles of laundry and the cluttered desk. Even the bedclothes were askew, though angels almost never had to sleep.

     “Hey,” she whispered, settling in the other beanbag chair and nudging his shoulder. Finnick turned to her, smiling, removing his headphones in a way that messed up his hair even more. “What are you playing?”

     “Super Smash Bros,” he said, gesturing with his controller. “Princess Peach just kicked Kirby into next week.”

     “This _Kirby_ is a strange creature,” she observed. Finnick laughed.

     “You’re right about that. Anyway,” he said, “what brings you here, to my glorious man cave?”

     “Restlessness. Boredom. Take your pick,” she replied, shrugging. Finnick picked up another game controller and handed it to her. She watched as he disconnected the headphones. “What am I supposed to do with this?”

     “Play, dummy,” he said. “God, this is nostalgic. I used to play this shit all night at Annie’s, and no one ever knew. I still spend a lot of time over there, but not as many nights, since the whole romantic development…”

      “How did you manage to fall in love with her?” asked Katniss. She wasn’t judging, but since she’d found out, she’d been wondering. Annie and Finnick’s relationship was so drastically different from what she’d had with Prim, but it was also similar at the core: unconventional, but so incredibly strong. “And why is she older than Prim? We were assigned at the same time.”

     “Right, so Annie almost drowned in the bath when she was about one,” said Finnick. “Occasionally, I guess, Guardians get assigned during near-death experiences instead of at birth…like, to save them or to keep it from happening again. I pulled her out and administered the dose of healing mojo, and it was all good. To answer the first question…well, I mean, I was always there. She was always with me. When she became old enough…I don’t know. I guess I would say that she kind of crept up on me. One day I realized I loved her in the only way I thought I wasn’t supposed to, but I checked all the books and all the rules, and it’s actually not forbidden at all.”

     “To fall in love with your charge or to fall in love with a human in general?” she asked.

      “Neither. My situation is a little more controversial, though…” he said with a shrug. “But, well, I’m supposed to be her companion for life. I can still do that like this…I can still protect her and guard her and all while also being head over heels in love with her.”

     Katniss nodded. “But how did you _fall in love_?”  

     Finnick had looked away from her, and was now looking through the characters available on the game. He stopped on the picture of the little boy with the baseball cap, who seemed to be named _Ness_. “I just told you. Pick your character.” he said, and then he paused, looking up at her. “Oh…you mean in general.”

      She nodded. “How is it…how does it work? How does it feel?” she babbled, waving her hands around and almost hitting him with the controller. She stopped when he jerked away from her, gazing at her in the most puzzled way. “How do you _know_?”

     “How does it work? Katniss, it’s not a skill set,” he said, setting aside the controller and leaning back in his chair. He heaved a sigh. “And it feels…like actually falling, like the ground’s not under your feet anymore and you’re hurtling towards the other person, and they’re hurtling towards you and even when you hit, it doesn’t hurt. It doesn’t even bother you. And how do you know? You just…realize. You realize that you like, or even love the little things, and then you realize that you love the whole picture, that it’s one of the most wonderful pictures you’ve ever seen.” said Finnick. “Or in your case, maybe painting is the better word.”

      He smirked knowingly.

      Katniss frowned, but part of her wanted to smile. The part of her that felt like the floor was gone. The part of her that loved the little things, stepping back to take a look at the painting. She thought back to that conversation with Prim, so long ago now, about how loving was what she was made to do. It was in her bones and her wings and her heart. And now, she felt like she was doing what she was meant to do again, even if it was different.

     But she’d said it would never happen, with certainty, even. She’d seen Gale’s point when he said it was wrong, that they were supposed to love and protect humanity without wanting anything in return. And even now, it still felt a little wrong—Peeta was not hers to love and his heart was not hers to want. It was one thing to love, but another thing entirely to love like _that_.

     Gale’s voice and Prim’s swirled in her head, battling for her attention, trying to influence her.

     “I don’t know what to feel,” she told Finnick. But really, he was in deeper than she was. Annie was his charge. That was even more controversial, more frowned upon, more inescapable than what Katniss was feeling. How could she say that this was difficult when he’d had to barter so much more? Katniss had nothing to lose—they could take Peeta away from her, but it would not be like cutting part of her away, like losing Annie would be to Finnick. It would not take away her purpose.

     “What would make you happy?” he asked, gazing at her as she fidgeted in the beanbag.

     “I’m not supposed to think about what makes me happy,” she said. “It was always supposed to be what made Prim happy.”

     “Prim’s gone,” he said gently. “And now, you have to think about _you_.”

      Katniss nodded slowly. Thinking about herself, about her own interests, was a foreign idea. But she saw why she had to do it—how else would she make this decision? Finnick watched her as she put down his game controller and got up out of the chair, leaving his room even though she would’ve loved to stay and play.

     She had thinking to do, and Super Smash Bros, with its strange creatures and bright colors and fighting sounds, wasn’t going to help her.

 ****

 Cap squinted on the screen, looking at something else but still listening to what Peeta was saying. Though Peeta wasn’t even sure what he was saying anymore—his words had shifted from coherent, complete sentences to babbling about this and that and whether or not he should act.

      “Did she get cuter or something? Because the way you are describing her to me, it seems like she’s even cuter than she was when I saw her last?” said Cap, finally looking up at his brother again. Peeta had skyped him this evening to chat, about his first few days on campus and about other things, but then Cap had asked how Katniss was doing and it had all become about her. About her hair, her eyes, her smile, her laugh, how much he wanted to hold her, how much he wanted to take her out on a date, and what should he do about it?   

     “What? No,” said Peeta. And then he thought about it, about her eyes and hand movements when she talked about her favorite book. About her playful, teasing relationship with Finnick, whom she obviously loved a great deal. “Okay, a little bit.”

     “It’s not surprising she’s related to Finnick,” said Cap. “You know, because they’re both hot. It must be genetic.”

     “You think everyone’s hot, Cap.”

     “Not everyone. I can name a few uglies here and there,” Cap said. “But this is not the information you want from me. You want to know if you should ask her out.”

     “Well, I don’t know if I should. I’m not…I don’t think she’d say yes…I think friendship is all she wants from me,” he said. “And that’s all right, really, but I just don’t want her to have to tell me.”

     “You can’t know for sure about anything if you don’t ask, Peeta,” said Cap. “If you don’t at least tell her something about how you feel, you’ll never know. It’s not like she’d laugh in your face.”

     “Well…” Peeta trailed off, afraid to admit that he was actually scared of that happening, among other things. He was afraid she’d disappear again. He was afraid she’d not want to be his friend at all anymore. He was afraid of a lot.

      “Maybe you’re right. Maybe you don’t really know her the way you think you do and she’s actually been plotting your murder this whole time,” said Cap. Peeta glared at him. “What? I’m _kidding_.”

     Peeta looked at the clock. It was getting kind of late, and they both had to turn in soon. Despite the cavalier way Cap had treated one of his most significant doubts when it came to Katniss, it had helped to just talk to someone about it. Sighing, he turned back to the screen, where Cap was peering at him expectantly. Hoping for a verdict, another problem to discuss, anything to continue the conversation, but Peeta didn’t have anything for him.

     “I need to go to sleep,” he said.

      Cap nodded. “Same. But sleep might help you clear your head, figure all this out. And, um, I miss you, little brother.”

      “I miss you too,” Peeta said. “Goodnight. And Cap?”

     “Yeah?”

     “I’ve been meaning to say...I know Mom didn’t much like football, but I think she’d be proud of you anyway.”

     He smiled sadly, and Peeta thought about how much Cap looked like their mother when he smiled.

     “Thanks, Peeta,” said Cap. “She’d be really proud of you, too.”

 ****

Weeks passed, and Katniss adjusted to living with Mags and Finnick. She no longer had to spend hours of the night wandering invisibly around town, or avoiding Gale at the Station. Because now that she was feeling exactly what she told him she wouldn’t, the last thing Katniss needed was to run into him again.

     She also adjusted to working at the bakery, helping them open every morning and close every evening. She talked to Annie or Delly when it was slow, and helped out in the kitchen with Mr. Mellark and Peeta when they needed an extra set of hands. When the school year started, it was just Walden and Katniss helping during the day while the others were at school—Walden manned the counter while Katniss cleaned tables and ran back and forth between the storefront and the kitchen with pastries, sandwiches, and hastily frosted cupcakes that were nowhere near as pretty as Peeta’s. 

      She was glad that he had release at the end of the day again this year, even though he used most of it for studying in a back booth—even though it was just September, he already had quite the workload due to the AP classes he was taking. Katniss occasionally watched him while she wiped down tables, secretly admiring the way his hair flopped into his eyes, forcing him to push it back every few minutes. “Get it cut” was Delly’s solution, and she announced it every time she strolled into the bakery to start her shift.

     Katniss was kind of partial to Peeta’s mess of curls, however, and hoped he wouldn’t chop them off until they were too unmanageable to deal with any longer.

     He didn’t get the haircut until the beginning of October, and it took Katniss by surprise. He came into the bakery late that afternoon, while Walden did a crossword puzzle and Katniss hung paper cutouts of smiling bats, pumpkins, and ghosts from the ceiling. She’d already put up the glow-in-the dark window clings to match, and they grinned at her from the front of the bakery.

     “I like Halloween,” said Katniss happily, hanging a ghost near the counter. Below her, Walden grunted. “People say that it’s a devil holiday or something, sometimes, but it comes from a Celtic harvest festival. They also happened to think the dead came back on that night, which is obviously untrue, but…”

     “Why?” a voice piped up behind her, and Katniss almost lost her footing and fell off the ladder. She turned and scowled down at Peeta, who was standing near the base of the ladder. “Sorry, did I startle you?”

     His hair was so much shorter, and it was actually styled neatly. It would’ve looked very nice, and dashingly handsome, if she hadn’t been so attached to the way it had looked the last time she saw him.

      “Yeah,” she grumbled. “That haircut is just scary enough to be your entire Halloween costume.”

      His brow furrowed, and he lifted his hand to his hair. “You don’t like it?”

     “The dead don’t come back. Ever. Never ever. That’s _why_ , Peeta Mellark.” She climbed down from the small ladder, which she’d had to stand on the top step of to reach the ceiling. He stared at her, a wounded look in his eye. “What?”

     “I thought…I’m sorry, I thought it looked good,” he was patting down the front of his hair, and then his other hand went to the side of his head. “It makes my ears look huge, doesn’t it? Should I join the circus and learn how to fly with the help of a talking mouse and a magic feather?”

     “What?” she asked.

      “Dumbo. It’s a Disney movie about an elephant, Katniss,” he said, dropping his hands. “You’ve never heard of it?”

      She shook her head. “No. And no, it’s not a bad haircut. I just…I didn’t want you to cut it in the first place. I liked the way it was.”

     Peeta’s cheeks flushed, and the tops of his ears turned pink to match. Katniss known about blushing and the reasons for it for quite some time now—she even felt her own cheeks warm from time-to-time—and she even knew that sometimes the color traveled to people’s ears. But she’d never seen it, and specifically, she’d never seen it on Peeta. That part of his ear had always been covered.

     Without thinking, she reached for him, lightly running one finger over the reddened flesh. His eyes got wider and his blush got redder.

     “God. Get a room. Any room,” groaned Walden. “Even _my_ room, if that’s easiest. It’s right upstairs.”

     She pulled back, and there it was. That rush of blood towards her cheeks, though the resulting color wasn’t as bright as Peeta’s because her skin wasn’t as pale.  She was rarely embarrassed, but now, she was on the verge of being mortified.

     What had possessed her to do such a thing? It was so unprecedented, so unwarranted, so impulsive. So unlike Katniss. She’d been resisting Peeta’s charms for over a month now, still working through the complicated feelings she was developing, and now—now, everything in her was going insane. She wasn’t just embarrassed that she’d done such a thing in front of Walden, but to Peeta it must’ve seemed strange, and his opinion mattered to her more than it should have. Also, even if she didn’t think about what the two Mellark boys (who were both staring at her now, which was becoming increasingly uncomfortable) thought, there was every other angel to think about.

     And she hadn’t even really crossed the line yet.

     She hadn’t kissed him, even though she kind of wanted to.

     Walden was a tad disgusted by the whole exchange, but as she drew away, concern passed across his features. Peeta was looking at her like she’d made him implode and all that was left in him was a bright white void—his eyes shone that much. With hope, rivaling her fear, with faith that rivaled her doubt.

     Katniss had backed several steps away from him now, standing out in the middle of the bakery for all to stare at. Though she and Walden and Peeta and an old man in the corner were the only ones there.

      She mumbled something incoherent and fled, her braid flying behind her as she ran out the door and around the corner towards home.

     It was only when she was halfway to the house that she realized she usually would’ve fled to the Station, or become invisible. Now, she was going to the home she shared with Mags and Finnick, a patched-together family, like a quilt, but you could barely see the seams. _Home_ , she thought. _When did it start to be home?_


	7. Chapter 7

**Chapter Seven**

_"Angels have no philosophy but love..." -Terri Guillemets_

* * *

 

 

“She won’t come out of her room,” said Finnick, and Peeta could hear him treading down the hallway, perhaps pacing. “Man, Peeta, what happened?”

     Peeta leaned back against the side of the bakery, closing his eyes and heaving a sigh. “I don’t even know…one second, she was fine, and the next she was out the door.”

     He felt heavy all over, like someone had tied weights to each of his limbs. He didn’t think he’d done anything to upset her, but he couldn’t shake the feelings of guilt and unease that had made themselves at home in his head. On the other end of the call, he could hear Finnick tapping on Katniss’s door again, talking through the crack in gentle, soothing tones.

     Peeta had only heard him speak that way once before, when he’d gone to the hardware store and Finnick had been assisting him. A little girl was wandering the aisles, bawling as she looked for her father, and Finnick had swooped in to calm her down and help her find him. It had been the moment that Peeta realized that the arrogant, showy front Finnick put up was far from truth and there was something of a hero beneath the surface if you stuck around long enough.

     But this time, Finnick’s calming technique wasn’t working, because Katniss still wouldn’t tell him anything, and she still wouldn’t open the door. Peeta heaved a sigh and thanked Finn for trying, hanging up a moment later and shoving the phone back into his back pocket. The October breeze ruffled what remained of his hair. He shoved his hands into the pockets of his hoodie to protect them from the chill in the air. He had a few options for his next course of action. He could go back into the bakery and finish the decorating that Katniss had started, or go home and do the load of AP homework he had gotten today. Or he could do what his overzealous heart was begging him to do, forgetting the ghosts and the textbooks and going after the girl.

     When his feet carried him down the street in the direction Katniss had gone, his heart thanked him for listening.

 ****

Finnick had stopped knocking on the door, and now she could hear him moving around the house. He alternated between blasting music and complaining that they were out of milk. It was her fault, he said, because of all the instant oatmeal she’d been eating.

     “You could just make it with water,” he hollered down the hall, “but no. You have to use the milk I buy for my Cap’n Crunch.” 

     Katniss knew what he was doing: he was simulating normalcy to help her forget that anything had happened, even though he didn’t know what had happened. He was trying to lure her out by picking a silly argument, something they normally would’ve pretended to fight over until one of them cracked and started to laugh. She appreciated the effort, but couldn’t bring herself to respond.

     Everything had gone wrong in the space of a few minutes. She’d been doing so well, keeping the romantic feelings locked away while her friendships with Peeta and everyone else at the bakery continued to develop. She’d known about the feelings since that chat with Finnick on her first night here, but somehow she’d been able to resist the pull. Every time she wanted to prolong hugs with Peeta, she didn’t, and every time she wished she could kiss his forehead or play with his hair, she suppressed the urge.

     But then, she failed to think before acting. Now she was here, her pillowcase dampened by tears of frustration, wondering if she could ever face Peeta again. If she could ever set foot in the bakery without reliving the humiliation. But then she’d have nothing to do. She’d miss everything about the bakery: her favorite corner, the cheese buns, and everyone who worked there. She’d miss the way it made her feel like she’d made so much progress since Prim died, and she’d miss feeling warm and whole, like she was among family.

     The doorbell was programmed to sound like whistling birds instead of the usual chimes, so when someone pressed the little button at the door, the house was filled with a four-note tune that reminded Katniss of spring mornings and bluebird onesies that matched the eyes of a perfect baby girl. Today, the sound was urgent and choppy, because whoever was at the door was impatiently poking at the button over and over. The neighbor’s son, most likely, sent over to return the casserole pan from last week.

      Finnick got up to answer it, as he always did when he was home. Katniss stared at one of the butterflies on the wall, comparing herself to it in that she felt like she was never going to leave this room again. Plus, she couldn’t even remember what it felt like to fly. She hadn’t taken to the skies much at all since arriving on earth, and she hadn’t even spread her wings in years. She wondered if Finnick ever indulged himself and unfolded his fluffy, tawny wingspan when in private, or with Annie. It had to be difficult, keeping up the pretense of being human for so long.

     There was a soft knock at her bedroom door again.

     “Go away, Finnick.”

     “It’s not Finnick.” Peeta’s voice was low and careful as he spoke through the crack of the door, and she saw the apology coming before it even left his lips. “Katniss, I’m so sorry.”

     Katniss felt herself rise up out of bed, the springs of the mattress creaking, announcing her movements. But she didn’t reply, even as she tiptoed towards the door.

     “I don’t know what I did,” he added. Of course he didn’t know. He’d done nothing. “But I’m sorry for whatever it was. I don’t want to screw things up with you, I—” Peeta cut himself off, and there was a sudden palpable silence. “I can’t lose this.”

      She could picture him on the other side of the door, his forehead pressed up against the wood and his eyes closed tightly. She mirrored this image, her loose hair falling around her face and her eyes squeezing out tears when they closed. The silence persisted again. She could almost feel his warmth through the door, though she was unsure if she was sensing the warmth of his body or the warmth of his heart and soul.

     “What’s _this_?” she whispered.

     Her door did not have a lock on it. Katherine had not been the kind of teenager to trust when behind locked doors, apparently. Katniss didn’t mind. She didn’t even mind now, because for some reason, she wanted Peeta to figure it out. She wanted him to break the silence by opening her door and barging into her bedroom to hug her. She wanted his answer, assured and resolute, to replace his apologies, but she wasn’t even sure what she wanted him to say.

     Peeta shifted, his clothes rustling quietly, air rushing into his lungs as he took a deep breath. The sort of deep breath people took when their chest felt tight and their eyes stung with tears, as if taking in more oxygen would dry their eyes and push down their emotions. Katniss’s stomach twisted at the thought of Peeta crying—happy, gorgeous Peeta Mellark crying over _this_. The thing he couldn’t lose, but also the thing he couldn’t define.

      She wasn’t going to let him. Not because of something she’d done.

     Katniss closed her hand around the doorknob, turning it and yanking the door open suddenly. Peeta didn’t have time to react, stumbling forward into the bedroom as she pulled it from under his hands. Katniss didn’t give him time to process, either—as soon as the door was out of the way, she had her arms wrapped around him and her face buried in his shirt.

     He wrapped his arms around her, breathing deeply again, but this time in relief. And for once, she didn’t feel the need to pull away so soon, or to crack a joke about getting a cupcake out of this. Peeta held her close to him, and she could feel the warmth of his skin and the way his breath stirred her hair. She could hear his heartbeat, thumping steadily in her hear. It was like Finnick had said—they’d been hurtling towards one another, and this was the moment of impact.

      And he was right, it didn’t hurt. It was one of the best feelings in the world.

     “Katniss,” Peeta whispered, but she shushed him, content to keep embracing him forever. She had never really wanted a new charge—the thought of replacing Prim was almost ludicrous, and she didn’t even want to attempt the same bond with someone else. But now she dreaded reassignment even more, because it meant she would have to leave.

      She had less than a year left in Panem City, a stretch of time that she could do with what she wanted. Katniss was perfectly content to stay right here in his arms for that entire time, and she could. She could live in his arms, spending every moment of her remaining eleven months with him.

       “Katniss,” he said again, and she could feel him drawing away. Could feel the warmth of him retreating, the cold more noticeable than she thought it could be, even in October. Even for an angel. “Katniss, come on now. You can let go, I’m not going anywhere.”

      But she was. She could end up anywhere.

     “Hey,” he murmured, cupping her face in his hands and peering into her eyes. His thumbs brushed against her cheeks, catching and wiping away the tears that had started to flow again. “Don’t cry. What happened that upset you, anyway, hmm?”

      “I…um…” Katniss lifted her hand to his ear again, touching it, indicating what had triggered her meltdown. “I was embarrassed. I’m sorry.”

     “Oh,” he said. “Okay.” She felt his fingers wander up, lightly tracing the outline of both of her ears. “Now we’re even.”

     Katniss felt more tears sting her eyes, but she was smiling. She remembered how he’d been the first thing to make her smile since Prim died, when she thought she’d never feel good about anything again. He was the beam of light that reached her thorough the fog of her grief, and even though it was Katniss who put herself back together again, it was Peeta who walked beside her and held her hand while she fumbled with the pieces and the glue.

     “Can I kiss you?” she asked him, her voice soft but sure. He looked like he hadn’t heard, his brow furrowing. She cleared her throat and opened her mouth to speak again. “I…”

     “Why would you even have to ask?” he said, and leaned in to press his lips against hers. The pressure was gentle, sweet, and it was gone too soon. He pulled away, looking unsure of himself. “Sorry, was that all right?”

      “Yeah,” she said. “But come back.”

        She twined her fingers through his, standing on her tiptoes to administer another kiss on his lips, one that was longer and more intense, but somehow still just as sweet. He lifted his hands to cup her face, but they were big enough that it was more like he was holding her entire head, cradling it between his hands.

     “You’re beautiful,” he said when he came up for breath. “Beautiful. Every bit of you.”

     “I think every bit of you is beautiful too,” she replied, smiling up at him, reaching for his hands so she could hold them in hers.

     “I think every bit of me is beautiful, too,” added Finnick from the doorway. Katniss removed herself from Peeta’s arms at once and lunged towards him, chasing him down the hallway and into the kitchen. She seized the wed dish rag from the counter and threw it at him. He dodged, and it slapped against the wall, sliding down and leaving a trail of dampness. “I take it you’ve made up. Like _literally_ kissed and made up.”

     “Finnick, you eavesdropping bastard,” she said, but she was laughing. “And yes, all is well now, thank you very much.”

     It was his turn to charge her, and she ran to the living room, where he cornered her and swept her off her feet. He hauled her up and over his shoulder, holding onto her legs as he spun around, chanting, “Peeta and Katniss, sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G.” She shrieked and demanded that he put her down at once, but Finnick pretended not to hear. “Who would’ve thought? Peeta Mellark and my little sister, two of my most favoritest people in the world!”

     “Hey, I thought I was older than you?” she said. “And also, ‘most favoritest’ is definitely not the proper way to say that.”

     “But you’re so small!” he crowed, spinning one more time before lowering her to the ground again. Instead of acknowledging the flaws in his choice of words, he ruffled her hair with one hand. He turned to Peeta, who had dared to follow them down the hallway and was now standing in the hall outside the living room. “Isn’t she just adorably tiny?”

     “I think she’s adorable, period.”

     “Oh yes, you’d better,” said Finnick. “Mellark, I swear, if you don’t cherish and respect my sister as much as possible, I will destroy you. In the least violent way possible, but I’ll make it so sucky that you’ll wish I had beat you up in an alley.”

     Peeta didn’t look worried. He just looked like the happiest boy in the world. He looked like Katniss felt—weightless. The obstacles they'd faced, the grief they had endured, and the losses of people they could never, ever replace… all of that darkness was in the past. For a moment, they were untouchable, and all that existed was light.

 ****

On Saturday morning, Peeta visited his mother.

     In the summer, he’d gone to the cemetery about twice each week, but during the school year it was always harder to pull off. So it had been a while since the last time he’d trekked over the slightly rolling terrain to get to his mother’s gravesite. The air had warmed a little since the day before, and the sun shone through wispy white clouds as the breeze blew leaves along the grass. Peeta remembered how much his mother loved autumn, especially days like this when she could make leaf piles to lie in and bask in the October sunlight.

     When he reached her headstone, he sat in the grass and leaves before it. He hadn’t brought her flowers in a while, and the dead remnants of the last batch had blown away, leaving just one dried and crumbling stem that he brushed aside.

     “Hi, Mom,” he said, gazing at her name etched into the stone. “I hope you haven’t missed me too much. I’m fine. Doing great, actually.”

       His mind called up a memory of his mother, sitting on the couch when he and Cap and Dad walked in the door one afternoon. She had visibly relaxed when she saw them, as if she’d been worrying about them while they were away at work and at school. She asked, “How was your day? How are you?” and Peeta, like always, told her he was doing great, even if he wasn’t. He could still see her smile, and the way strands of blond hair that had fallen out of her ponytail framed her face. Seeing her feeling better for just a moment was all he needed to make his day.

     But today, he was really doing great.

     “So I told you about that girl I met,” he continued, running a hand through his hair. “Katniss. She’s so great, Mom, and really, really beautiful. And it’s not even just what she looks like—I mean, she’s pretty and all, but there’s just something in her that radiates beauty. She’s not the kindest person I’ve ever met or anything, and she’s certainly not easy to understand, but something about her…I can’t even describe Katniss in a few words.”

     Peeta sighed, the breath passing through his lips mirroring the whoosh of the wind. A bird chirped somewhere, and he could hear the cars on the road, but other than that there was a peaceful silence that hovered over the cemetery. In his head, his mother was still smiling, but she didn’t say a word.

     “We’re going on a date today,” he told her happily, folding and unfolding his hands in his lap. “My palms are ridiculously sweaty. Like, I’m so nervous, Mom. I don’t know how I could mess it up, but I’m worried I will anyway. Do you know what Dad said?  That before your first date, he thought of you as a remarkable wild creature that might tear open his throat if he took one wrong step. But he took you out that day anyway. He bought you a copy of _The Call of the Wild_ and a pair of little wolf earrings, and he said that Grandma was so mad when you wore them on your wedding day…” Peeta smiled to himself. He’d always known the story, but his father never got tired of telling it. It made Dad so happy, even now that she was gone. “I don’t know what point he was trying to make, maybe just that sometimes doing things that freak you out can end well. I think that’s a good point.”

     The quietude settled over them again, but Peeta didn’t mind. He didn’t mind that she couldn’t answer, not anymore. It didn’t matter. It only mattered that she could listen. He recalled what Katniss had said, about the dead not being able to hear from Heaven, but he found it hard to believe. He didn’t feel like it would be very Heavenly to be so far from the world that you couldn’t see it anymore, to be so far from your loved ones that you couldn’t even hear when they called to you. Not being able to answer, or to guide them, would be saddening…but not as saddening as not knowing.

     “I miss you, Mom,” he finally said. “I love you.”

     And even though some of his memories of her were starting to fade and blur, he could still hear her say it back.

****

He found Katniss in the bakery, eating a cheese bun near the counter as she watched the customers sit around and go about their business. As a girl he recognized from school closed up her laptop and put her papers and books away, Katniss finished her snack and waited for the customer to vacate the table. When she was nearly out the door, Katniss swooped in and wiped the table down with efficient speed, smiling triumphantly when she finished. As banal as the job of wiping tables seemed, Katniss enjoyed it somehow.

     “You missed a spot,” he said as he walked up to her. There was a tiny crumb stuck at the corner of her mouth, and he reached to brush it away with his thumb.

       “On my face, or on the table?” she asked, looking over her cleaning job once more. Peeta shook his head, laughing to himself. She was quite possibly the cutest thing he’d ever seen, with her eyebrows scrunched and her eyes flicking back and forth, reminding him of liquid mercury or storm clouds in the distance. Her hair was braided down her back, a thick rope of hair that was noticeably longer than it had been when he’d met her, and she was wearing a big sweater with too-long sleeves that slipped over her hands. She pushed them back up so they bunched at her elbows. Katniss lifted her head to look at him again, narrowing her eyes when she caught him staring. “What?”

     “Uhm,” he said. “Uh. Good morning.”

     “It _is_ a beautiful day, isn’t it?” Katniss gestured out the window as she moved back towards the counter, slipping behind it to stow away her trusty spray bottle and rag. “I could go for a walk in the park. After whatever you were planning to do, that is.”

     “I figured we’d head over to the Ice Cream Parlor There’s this sundae-for-two thing they have with a lot of chocolate and heart sprinkles and I thought I’d be cheesy as hell and buy us one,” he told her, tucking his hands into his jacket pockets and pulling them back out again. He knew his fidgeting just made his nervousness more obvious, but he did it anyway, running his hand through his hair and shifting from foot to foot as he watched her consider it. God, what if she thought it was _too_ cheesy?

     “That sounds wonderful, Peeta,” said Katniss, grinning brightly as she rounded the corner, grabbing one of those circular knit scarves in a shade of deep burgundy on her way towards him. “Let’s go, before they run out of ice cream.”

     “They’re not going to run out of ice cream.”

     “Never say never, Peeta Mellark,” she said, grabbing onto his hand. Her fingers wrapped around his as they walked out of the bakery, waving goodbye to Delly, who stood behind the counter with a satisfied look on her face. Katniss started to list bizarre reasons that the parlor might run out of ice cream, like an isolated power outage or a hoard of hungry soccer players that kept going back for seconds and then threw up in whatever was left.

     When they got their sundae, he was surprised at how normal it felt. It was just like always. They laughed and talked about books, and she asked him about school and he asked her whether she liked foreign movies, because his dad had a stash of them somewhere that hadn’t been touched in ages. There was just more flirting than usual, more blushing and hiding behind sweater paws and burying faces in scarves. More hand holding, too.

      Later, when they walked through the park, he realized that all his nerves had dissipated, leaving just a pleasant, spreading warmth inside him. Her fingers were threaded between his, her smiling face was turned up towards him, and all was right with the world. He could lean over and kiss her if he wanted to, because he was allowed to do that now—so he did. He missed her mouth and got her cheek instead, but she repaired the mistake quickly by grabbing his face and planting one, two, three firm kisses right on his lips. They realized they weren’t alone on the path when a woman jogging behind them passed by, flashing a thumbs up, and they both ended up blushing furiously.

     When they came across the bridge, Katniss paused. He watched her examine the slightly weathered mural he’d painted months ago, her expression somehow puzzled and satisfied at the same time. When she turned to him, she seemed to be debating something in her head.

     “Peeta…”

      “Yeah?”

     “Did you paint me because…because you might be in love with me?” she asked.

     “No. Well, I kind of. I painted you because I was fascinated by you,” he said, gazing at his handiwork again. Part of him only saw what needed fixing—where the colors had bled, which details looked wrong—but the rest of him felt content with his depiction of her. It was just like she was: mysterious but charming, like something you might pull out of a dream. “Which kind of led into me being kind of in love with you.”

     She nodded. “I’ve been wondering…”

      “Wondering what?”

       She looked straight at him, her gaze unwavering and so intense that he actually squirmed. She was so vulnerable, but so defiant, showing both strength and weakness simultaneously. She was everything the painting portrayed her as—stunning, graceful, strong, and, in a way, tired. Sad. Afraid. He wanted to paint her from the front, with real detail on a real canvas, to capture her soulfulness and beauty in this moment and keep the image forever.

     “How you got the colors right.”

     “What do you mean?” he asked, perplexed.

     So she showed him what she meant.  


	8. Chapter 8

**Chapter Eight**

_"I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free...."  -Michelangelo_

* * *

 

 

The seed of terror in Katniss’s stomach grew, becoming vines and thorns that scratched and squeezed. As soon as she’d spread her wings, she had closed her eyes against the vision of Peeta standing there, unable to watch his face change in response. Now, she couldn’t bring herself to open them.

            She wondered how much surprise was too much, and if she’d blown open a hole in the boundaries between known and unknown for nothing. She feared that he’d take this revelation wrong somehow—maybe he would be too shocked and confused, or maybe he would think that her secrecy was akin to betrayal. So much of what he’d known about her had been a lie, how could he ever trust anything else that she said?

     It was so uncomfortable, so daunting, so uncertain. But at the same time, she felt free. Not only because it was good to stretch her wings after so long, but because finally showing Peeta the truth felt like unlocking a set of shackles she’d unknowingly closed around her ankles. It felt right to open to him, despite the fear she felt, despite the feeling of nakedness as she stood before him.

     Katniss couldn’t take it much longer, so she opened her eyes and folded her wings away. Peeta was gawking, his lips parted and his eyes wide. He was stunned, clearly, but she wasn’t sure how.

     “Say something,” she said, her voice so soft it was almost drowned out by the sound of the breeze and the rustling leaves.

     “Um.”

     “Well, that’s a start,” she said.

     Peeta chuckled awkwardly, and Katniss almost felt relieved. Almost. He didn’t seem angry right now, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t. That didn’t mean he wouldn’t start a fight, or leave, or cry. That didn’t mean it wasn’t over when it had barely even started.

     “Okay, can we sit somewhere? I need a minute to sit down,” he said, looking away from her. Katniss tried not to let it hurt too much.

     She nodded and crossed over to a bench that was shaded by a tall oak tree. He joined her, sitting on the other end and bending over to hold his head in his hands. They sat like that for a while longer, Katniss’s mind buzzing. There was so much he could say, so much she didn’t know how to say.

     She thought about how stressful this must be for him, how thrown off balance he must be. This kind of revelation could make someone rethink everything. Maybe she was losing him, but that really meant nothing when she thought that he might be losing much more than that.

     “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to freak you out, I just…I thought you should know.”

     “Well, I am freaked out,” he said, sitting up abruptly and turning to her. She couldn’t see him well enough in this light to determine what emotions clouded his eyes. “In what world would I not be freaked out by this, Katniss?”

     “I…I don’t know.”

      “What are you?” he asked. She chewed on her lip, avoiding his eyes. “Come on, Katniss. You can’t just pull a stunt like that and then avoid answering any questions.”

     She wanted to get up and leave. She wanted to disappear. She looked at him, at his clenched jaw and stiff posture, and weighed her options. She had already been so selfish by showing him, and had already messed up his life so much by doing so…maybe it was best if she just cut everyone’s losses now.

     But it would hurt so much to lose him; it would hurt him so much if she were gone.

     “You have that look,” said Peeta, his voice tense. “That look you have when you’re about to flee, because you don’t think you can handle it. I’ve seen that look enough to know it, Katniss. But you can handle it, and you _have_ to.”

     “I’m sorry.”

     “Don’t be sorry. Just explain yourself,” he said. “Just give me something more to work with than a pair of massive, vanishing wings. You owe me that fucking much.”

     “I know,” she said, her voice trembling. Katniss took a deep breath, forcing the air in and out of her lungs and closing her hands into fists to stop them from shaking. “I know. I’m sorry. I am. Please don’t be mad.”

     He just shook his head at her. She wasn’t sure what that meant.

     “Are you mad?” she asked, in the interest of clarification.

     “No, not really. Just…” Peeta shrugged. “I’m just freaked out. This is weird to me, Katniss. You don’t get how weird it is.”

      Parts of it were weird for her. Working in the bakery as if she belonged there, living in a house with a bedroom of her own. Looking at him and feeling warm and happy and closer to her whole self than she’d been since Prim died.

     But for him, it was myth becoming truth. The stuff of fantasy becoming real. He was right that she owed him an explanation, because she had made this his reality now, and he deserved to understand it.

     “Peeta, I’m a Guardian angel.”

     “Okay. So, does that mean God is real? Like, undoubtedly?” he asked. Katniss shook her head.

     “I don’t know. I know of Heaven, angels, and demons, but none of us is sure who runs it all. If there is someone running it,” Katniss explained. “It’s enough to focus on the bureaucracy that angelic operations have become without worrying about the big guy, really. For me, anyway.”

     “You’re an agnostic angel, then?” Peeta laughed, for real this time. It wasn’t the irony that made her join him, but the relief that he was laughing at all. This was fine. This was good. This was right.

     Katniss went on to explain the different groups of angels, and how they worked like families. She explained that angels weren’t born into existence the same way humans were, so they were essentially barren, with a strange exception being Nephilim. She told him how taboo it was for her to have a relationship with him, because of the stigma attached to crossbreeding. She even told him about the Station, the way her charges were assigned, and her ability to be disembodied or invisible at will.

     It was so much to talk about, so much for him to process, that Katniss was surprised he kept prompting her for more information.

     They were walking back through the park and she was speaking softly about dying. It was late afternoon now, and it was quiet, as if nature had intuited what she was talking about and had stopped to listen respectfully.

      “The soul will just come out of the body, all wispy and blue…it’s beautiful in a very sad way,” she said. “And they’ll take the hand of the Collector, which is all they can touch, and they’ll just…fade away. I don’t know where they go. Someplace good.”

     Peeta was holding her hand, listening carefully. Now that the initial shock had blown over, she was glad to be telling him all this, and he seemed to be interested, too.

     “Katniss, can I ask you something?” he asked, squeezing her palm gently as they moved along the path.

     “You’ve been asking me a lot of things,” she said with a smile. Peeta didn’t smile back, and she thought she saw sadness glinting in his eyes.

     “You were Prim’s guardian angel, weren’t you?”

     It had been hours of talking and explaining, and somehow she had avoided that very subject. It hadn’t been on purpose, not really, but an unconscious way of guarding the most personal parts of her life.

     “Yes, yes I was,” she said. “I think I always will be, even when I’m someone else’s.”

     Peeta let go of her hand and reached up to touch her face, wiping away the tears that were forming at the corners of her eyes. He leaned in and pressed a kiss to her forehead.

      He didn’t ask if that meant she was leaving—she figured he already knew. He didn’t ask her when she would be gone, even though it meant he wouldn’t get to see her anymore. He didn’t ask her any more questions at all, about angels or demons or Heaven or death.

     He just kissed her. He just held her. And then, when she was ready, he just walked her home.

 ****

On Halloween the bakery closed early, and as patrons filed out, party guests filed in. It was a smaller gathering, and Peeta was glad—dealing with the strange chaos of big parties had always been a challenge to him. He didn’t know what to do or who to talk to, how much food he was supposed to eat in order to leave enough for everybody, or whether there would be a line for the bathroom in the event that he had to go.

     Peeta was placing cupcakes on the tiered display rack, alternating between spiders and pumpkins and grinning skeleton faces. Almost everyone had already arrived and had started picking at the spread the Mellarks had laid out on the counters and a long buffet table, so Peeta had been charged with replenishing the snacks.

     “Where’s Katniss?”

     Peeta turned to see Cap, decked out in shiny silver everything with a funnel hat and a paper heart pinned to his chest. Clearly, this was his own rendition of the Tin Man. Peeta thought he looked like he’d been puked up by the 80s.

     “Um, I don’t know,” said Peeta, looking around the bakery again. He had thought that she would come with Finnick, but he was already there. Since he'd walked in, he had been parading around in his costume, which was little more than a net wrapped around his body. “ _Catch of the day_ ” he called himself, a title that Annie, Delly, and Cap all seemed to agree with wholeheartedly.

      Peeta had just stared at him blankly until he explained the joke, which Peeta had already understood. He was just too distracted to really find it very funny.

     “What’s the deal with you now, anyway?” Walden asked, appearing on Peeta’s other side as he put the last cupcake on the display. Walden had a drink in one hand and toy gun to go with his gangster costume in the other. “You are an item, aren’t you?”

     “Well, yeah.”

     “So she’s your date to this thing,” said Walden. Peeta nodded. “So if she doesn’t show, she’s standing you up, basically.”

     Cap punched him in the arm, and Walden made a face.

     “That’s not helping,” Cap scolded. “Go be a stupid pessimist over there, with your girlfriend, who actually likes you for some reason.”

       Walden turned and walked off, leaving his brothers at the snack table. Peeta reached for the bag of potato chips they had hidden underneath the table and opened it, topping off the half-eaten bowl.  

     “You know she wouldn’t do that,” Cap said, squeezing Peeta’s shoulder. “She wouldn’t pull that shit—it’s cowardly and rude and Katniss isn’t like that. She has a good reason, I’m sure.”

     Peeta knew his brother was right. Katniss had integrity, and she cared about him too much to ditch him now. She wouldn’t miss the party anyway—she’d been pretty excited when he told her about it. According to Finn, she had started planning out her costume right when she’d gotten home that day, digging through her closet and the internet for ideas. So he wasn’t really worried that she would bail.

      He was just worried that she wouldn’t come because she was already gone. Since the night she’d revealed the truth about everything, Peeta hadn’t said anything else about it. He hadn’t asked her any more questions or mentioned how nice he’d thought her wings were or anything. Out of fear he would begin to annoy her and out of fear of the answers to his questions. Part of him even worried about the terrifyingly possible possibility that he had imagined the whole thing.

     But avoiding the subject seemed to make his worrying worse. There was no security in not knowing.

     Peeta was in the kitchen finishing up another batch of cheese buns—which he’d insisted on making for the party even though they weren’t typical party fare—when he heard the faint bells of the bakery door. He pulled the tray out of the oven and let it clatter on the counter, quickly closing the heavy oven door and yanking off his oven mitts. He pushed through the swinging kitchen doors and let the smell of the freshly baked buns waft into the lobby.

     He wasn’t sure if it was the addictive aroma or the sight of him that made Katniss smile, but he didn’t care because he’d put the smile there either way.

     “Ms. Earhart,” he said with a nod as he walked up to her.

     “I’m sorry I’m late. I got caught up,” said Katniss, guilt passing over her face. Peeta shook his head and looked over her costume, which seemed perfect for her now that he thought about it. Not just because of the perfect leather jacket that Katniss had already owned, or because of her growing independence and strength—those things were part of it, but not the most obvious.

     No. Amelia Earhart was a perfect costume for Katniss because Amelia Earhart could fly. rse she was Amelia Earhar--she he first one that Peeta thought of was that Ameliair and the aviator goggles now perched on

      “You’ve been missing for eighty years,” he said with a grin, reaching to play with the end of her scarf. “I don’t think ‘ _I got caught up_ ’ is a good enough excuse.”

     “Peeta, really,” she continued, still a bit distressed, despite the small smile his comment had invoked. “I was at the Station and I didn’t mean to stay as long as I did, but Gale wouldn’t stop yelling at me so I yelled back and lost track of time. I’m so sorry I’m late, really. I should’ve been early. I wanted to be early.”

     “Come here,” said Peeta, opening his arms for her and holding her close to his body. Katniss held onto him tightly and buried her face in his jacket.

     Peeta was the first to let go, taking Katniss’s hand instead and leading her back to the kitchen where they could talk in a more private setting. She wanted to talk about her disastrous visit with Gale, and he wanted to finally ask her the question that had been nagging him, and neither conversation was fit for a bakery full of friends and family.

      He handed her a cheese bun and sat down beside her on one of the stools at the kitchen island.

     “Do you want to talk first, or should I?” he asked.

     “What about the party?”

     “It’ll still be there when we’re done here,” said Peeta, reaching for a cheese bun himself. As he held it in his hand, he realized that they were still too hot for him to eat, still a little too fresh to hold, but he didn’t put it down.

     “Gale doesn’t approve of this. He doesn’t approve of _us_ ,” Katniss sighed heavily. The hot cheese bun didn’t seem to bother her much; she bit into it, chewed, and swallowed without flinching. “He never has. A friend of his—no, his brother, really—was killed by a Nephilim.”

     “Nephilim means half-human, half-angel, right?” Peeta asked, just to clarify. Katniss nodded. “What does that have to do with us?”

     “Because he thinks…he thinks it will lead to a kid like that. Angel powers, human corruptibility,” Katniss shook her head, grimacing. “It wouldn’t. I would never. But he doesn’t care. It’s still wrong to him.”

      “And he wouldn’t listen at all?”

     “No. He just interrupted me,” she said, her bottom lip trembling. “He just said cruel things, things he knew would hurt me. I thought he was my friend, Peeta. I thought he would…I don’t know, that he would be more understanding. And if he didn’t like it, he would suck it up and pretend to be happy for me anyway.”

     Peeta’s cheese bun was cool enough to eat now, but he set it down on the counter and reached for Katniss. She wasn’t crying, but her eyes were heavy with disappointment. She had trusted this Gale guy, and he’d torn her down. It pissed him off. But she didn’t need to see him angry, not now.

     “Kids? We’re too young to be talking about kids,” he joked, smiling at her and hoping she would mirror him.

     She did smile, if only slightly. “I’m like, three-hundred something.”

     “And honestly, you look great. You must have a great skincare regimen.”

     Katniss leaned in and kissed him, using her feet to drag his stool closer to hers so that she could drape her arms around his neck. His cells seemed to sing, still rejoicing about getting to kiss her—it was still so fresh and new and thrilling that he was so enthused it that he almost forgot what he needed to say.

     When he forced himself to pull away, he regretted it instantly. But he soldiered on, leaning away from her, untangling her from him so that he wouldn’t give in to her beautiful mouth again.

     It was another minute before he spoke, a minute during which he just stared at her. Since the mural on the side of the bridge, Peeta hadn’t attempted painting Katniss again—but now, he wanted to. Not like this, when her hair was all pinned up under an aviator hat, instead of woven into her signature braid. Not like this, when she looked so sad. He wanted to paint her how she looked when the world was good to her for the day, when her eyes remembered how to sparkle and you could see her teeth when she smiled. It wasn’t that she was more beautiful when she was happy, but that her happiness was something he was growing particularly fond of.

     Then, he looked down at the counter, studying the cheese bun instead of her face.

     “Will you tell me before you leave?”

     “Before I leave the party?” she asked, though he suspected she knew that he meant otherwise.

     “No. Before you leave,” Peeta said, lifting his gaze again. She had not been crying before, when she had told him about Gale. But now, her eyes were damp with tears.

     “Do we have to talk about this?”

     He nodded. Yes, they had to talk about this.

     “Does it have to be now?” Katniss turned her stool away so that she faced the wall. “After the day I’ve had?”

     Peeta hated himself for bringing it up like this, but really he’d had no choice. “I think…I think it’s relevant now.”

     It was relevant now because their relationship was on trial by some guy Peeta had never met. It was relevant now because the difference between them was clearer than ever, and so were all of the arguments against continuing their relationship. It was relevant now because it had been bothering Peeta for days, plaguing his peace of mind, inspiring his nightmares.

     Katniss nodded—she knew this. She knew why he wanted to talk about it. She also must have known that he wouldn’t like what she had to say.

     “I don’t know, Peeta. I don’t know if I will be able to say goodbye.”

     Peeta rubbed away the tears on his cheeks and wiped his nose and gritted his teeth. Her answer hurt, but it wasn’t unexpected and it didn’t change anything.

     “How long are we supposed to have, then?”

     “It’s been about seven months since Prim died. They gave me eighteen.”

     He closed his eyes and did the math. It was more time than he thought. It was almost a year. Would it be enough? He didn’t feel like anything less than always could be enough. But they would have to make do.

     “Katniss.”

     “What? Is that too soon?” She wasn’t angry or bitter, but rather her voice was colored with resignation. As if she had expected him to decide that eleven months was too little, and that it wasn’t worth the heartache. That it wasn’t worth starting something that would inevitably end come September.

     “No. What I was going to say is, well, so what? I just needed to know. I needed to know if I should be afraid of losing you every time we aren’t together, or if you were just going to disappear on me in the middle of a sentence. I just needed to know…and now I do. I know that for eleven months, you’re not going anywhere.”

      Peeta held out a hand, and Katniss threaded her fingers through his, allowing him to lead her back out into the bakery, where they were surrounded on all sides by people they cared about. There would be more things to talk about, and more questions to ask, but for now everything was resolved. Everything was good.

     And at the end of the night, when the snacks were merely crumbs on trays and in bowls, and when Peeta’s Halloween playlist had been turned down so that it was just barely there in the background, the two of them sat in a booth by the window and watched cars pass on the street outside. They had turned off the lights, but the glow beyond the kitchen doors and of the streetlamps outside still reached into the room.

      Here, in the dark and the quiet, with only the occasional beams of headlights to light up her face, Peeta saw the Katniss he wanted to paint again. Something in her was still sad, but there was something else too. Something else that made her squeeze his hand and glance across the table at him, just to look. Something else that made their silence comfortable, even comforting.

     It was something else that Peeta didn’t quite have a name for yet, but he knew that they both felt it. He knew that it deserved to be on canvas, because that way, he could keep it forever.


	9. Chapter 9

**Chapter Nine**  

_"Yes, love indeed is light from heaven...." -Lord Byron_

* * *

 

 

In November, Peeta applied to three universities, none of which were more than an hour away. Katniss proofread his essays and pushed him to apply for scholarships. When Mr. Mellark asked about her plans, since her gap year would soon be coming to an end, Katniss dodged the questions. She tried to be polite about it, but mostly it was just awkward.

     “He’s just concerned,” Peeta told her one day, after his father was safely in the kitchen, out of earshot. “He sees a lot of potential in you, and he just hopes you’ll do something with it.”

     “I am going to do something with it,” she said, without looking up from the magazine she was thumbing through.

     “I know, and you know. But he doesn’t know,” Peeta replied. “Just keep in mind that he cares about you, okay? You’re not just the bus-girl, and you’re not just his son’s girlfriend.”

     She knew Mr. Mellark cared about her. That was part of the problem—she didn’t want to lie to him. Even more so, she didn’t want to hurt him by leaving without a trace. It was enough that she would have to abandon Peeta, with no idea where she was going and no idea if she’d ever see him again, but knowing that there were other people on this path of destruction just made her feel worse.

     “Hey,” said Peeta, reaching across the table and tapping the underside of her chin, urging her to look up at him. “Let’s put away the college stuff for the day, okay? Let’s do something.”

     “Like what?”

     “I have an idea,” Peeta said, closing his laptop and stowing it away in his bag, which he toted into the back of the bakery to leave with his father for safekeeping. When he came back, he was jingling the keys to the Mellark minivan, looking dismayed to find Katniss in the same place he’d left her. “Well, don’t just sit there. We’re going on an adventure. Get your coat!”

     She got her coat, and was then ushered out the door. Peeta wasn’t wearing a coat this afternoon, just a hoodie, but he’d brought thin little fingerless gloves that he slipped on once they were outside. Katniss wrapped her properly mittened hand in his as they crossed the street to the parking lot.

     Despite spending so many years in Panem City, Katniss couldn’t tell where Peeta was taking them. When she asked, he shook his head and turned up the radio, singing louder and more off key to Christmas carols that Katniss thought were still too early, even with Thanksgiving right around the corner. But she listened anyway, and though his voice was not melodic, the enthusiasm of it charmed her just as it would as if he were the music industry’s next sensation. She could listen to him sing like this for days.

     He drove them out of the residential area of town, towards the power plant and the factory—Katniss could see the clouds of smog rising up in the distance. But Peeta did not go that far, instead veering off the highway and pulling into the parking lot of an arena-shaped building that was already boasting yards and yards of Christmas lights.

     “The Ice Complex,” Katniss said, recognizing it from the one time she’d been there, when Prim went to someone’s seventh birthday party. “I don’t know how to skate, Peeta.”

     “We’ll go slow. I’ll hold your hand,” he said, pulling the key from the ignition and shoving it in his pocket. “I think once you get the hang of it, you’ll love it.”

     Katniss thought of the sharp, narrow blades of ice skates, how simultaneously violent and feeble they were. Undoubtedly, she would fall when only supported by a strip of metal on each foot, and undoubtedly she would drag Peeta down with her.

     She must have still looked nervous, because Peeta leaned across the console and cupped her face with one hand, holding her there so he could lock eyes with her.

     “I won’t let you fall,” he promised. His eyes were intense and sincere, so she believed him. Nodding, Katniss undid her seatbelt and moved to get out of the car. Peeta made a sound of protest and gently pulled her face towards his for a kiss.

     Katniss smiled and pulled away. “Adventure is waiting,” she said.

     Peeta grinned at her, looking so outrageously happy that she could almost hear her heart break into song.

 ****

The Ice Complex was bright and loud, echoes bouncing off of the walls and the high dome ceiling. Smells from the concessions stand hit Katniss in a wave as they approached, and she stopped in her tracks to watch the giant soft pretzels rotate behind the glass.

     “You can get one of those later. We have to rent some skates,” said Peeta, reaching for her hand. She grabbed onto it, letting him pull her along towards the counter, where he pulled out his wallet and told the attendant what size he needed. “Katniss, what size shoe do you wear?”

     “What? Oh, a seven and a half,” she replied distractedly, her gaze wandering to the rink, where people in sweaters and coats were gliding around on the ice. Some of them wobbled and grabbed onto the walls, others seemed to float. When she turned back, Peeta was holding two pairs of worn and grungy rental skates and staring at her with wonder in his eyes. “What?”

     He held out her skates, which dangled dangerously from tied-together laces. She took them carefully.

     “You look at this place like it’s some kind of modern marvel,” he said. “Like you do with a lot of really normal, mundane things. It’s…charming.”

     “Charming?” Katniss shook her head. “I’m not charming.”

     “You are, in your own way,” said Peeta with a soft laugh as he led her over to the benches where they could change into their skates. “And I, for one, love it.”

     “Good to know, I guess.”

     Peeta smiled and turned away from her, instead busying himself with the chunky double-knots of his shoelaces. Katniss wiggled her feet out of her own boots and slipped them into the ice skates, pulling the laces tight and looping them into bunny ears.

     When Peeta was finished, he pushed himself to his feet and stood in front of her, his balance seemingly perfect. But he teetered a little when he helped her up, which made Katniss smile—it was good to know that he wasn’t the most skilled on ice skates either, so he couldn’t judge her too hard for being so inexperienced.

     Together, they hobbled around for a few minutes to get their bearings before setting out onto the ice. Katniss clung to the railing, even as Peeta pulled away to show her how he did it.

     “You have to let yourself fall, so you know how to get up,” he said, slowly lowering himself to the ice and sitting there, waiting for her to do the same. “Come on, I’ll help you.”

     She joined him on the ground, and watched as he demonstrated how he pushed himself up. 

     “Makes you look like a frog,” she observed, but as she attempted it herself her skates slid around, threatening to knock her onto her butt again. Peeta laughed as she rose to full height, her arms spread out to try to keep her balance, her stance awkward and legs shaky. “Okay, I imagine I looked worse than a frog.”

     “But look, you’re not using the side,” Peeta pointed out. “I’m not an expert, but I think that’s a good sign.”

     Peeta was right when he said he wasn’t an expert—he didn’t know exactly how to explain the elements of skating that he had learned, or the techniques employed. But he was a good example and an even better coach, gliding slowly beside her as she rocked on her blades. If it looked like she was going to fall, he reached out to steady her. If she was discouraged, he let her know she was getting better. Soon enough, she could remain upright and glide on her own. She wasn’t going to win any medals anytime soon, but she was adjusting.

     “You’re a quick study,” said Peeta as they headed for the rink’s exit to take a break. “It took me forever to figure out skating.”

     “Well, um, I tried to imagine it was like flying,” she said as he stepped onto the rubber mat surrounding the ice rink. “After that, it was easier.”

     “Were you born knowing how to fly?” he asked. She shook her head.

     “No. We had to grow into our wings first, and then we had to take classes to learn,” Katniss laughed, and a memory bubbled up—it was of a much younger Gale jumping from a considerable height but forgetting to extend his wings, so that he hit the mat with a painful thud. His nose had broken and blood had smeared across his face, but he’d grinned all the way to the infirmary. “It’s completely different than skating—flying is in the sky, using different techniques and different muscles. But both start out with learning to fall and get up again, so I started there.”

     Peeta looked like he wanted to say something, but after a moment he closed his mouth and continued on towards the concessions stand. He bought a large Coke to share and a soft pretzel for each of them, which came with a cup of warm liquid cheese. Katniss drowned her pretzel with the cheese and scarfed it down ravenously, while Peeta picked off pieces and dipped them one by one. Eventually, he just gave the rest of his to her.

     After letting their stomachs settle, Katniss and Peeta spent another hour on the ice, during which Katniss became more and more comfortable on skates. But she was still glad to have her normal shoes back on as they walked out of the rink and into the crisp evening air.

     When they climbed into the van, Peeta turned the key to start the heat, but he didn’t shift gears or make any other move to leave the parking lot. He turned the radio off and sat there, curling and uncurling his hands around the steering wheel as the car started to heat up around them. He wouldn’t look at her, either, instead staring straight ahead at the Ice Complex

     It was not an unhappy silence, at least, but an uncertain one. Like he had something to say but wasn’t sure how to get it out.

     Finally: “Katniss, I think I love you.”

     “Oh.”

     “No, I know I do. I know I love you,” he said, turning to meet her eyes in the dim lighting. “I just think you should know.”

     “Peeta...”

     He held up a hand to stop her.

     “Wait, I’m not done. For a while, loving you was something that scared me. I mean, it was inevitable, but it scared me anyway so I decided not to say anything to you or to properly admit it to myself,” said Peeta. “But then, today…well I think that it’s not just flying and skating—there’s a lot of things that start with learning to fall. This is one of them. We’ve taken a leap, and it’s only a matter of time before we hit the ground and it will hurt…but you have to let yourself fall, so you know how to get back up. We will get back up and go on with our lives.”

     Katniss didn’t want to think about getting back up and going on with her life—she liked the way it was now. She liked Panem City, liked working at the bakery and living with Grandma Mags. Being a Guardian was wonderful, but normal was nice too.

     And she loved Peeta. She loved him and wasn’t ready to leave him yet, especially not when they’d only just begun.

     “I know, but we have now,” she said. “I love you _now_.”

     She reached for him, her hand resting on his shoulder as the tension left his muscles, as his grip on the wheel released. He leaned toward her, his own hand coming up to slide through her hair—eyes closed, foreheads touched, lips met softly.

     And then, Peeta drove her home.

     For the next few days, he made sure he told her he loved her as much as possible.

    ****

Mellark Thanksgivings were many things.

     They were colorful, with strings of decorative fabric leaves hung along the walls, the front door adorned with a wreath made of plastic fruit, and different paintings of turkeys hung up throughout the house. On the mantel, there was the turkey the boys had made with painted handprints when they were little. In the dining room, a more recent still life of a wild turkey done by Peeta. The bathroom even had a tiny watercolor turkey perched beside the turkey soap dispenser and matching hand towels.  

     Mellark Thanksgivings were also crowded. They didn’t have a lot of family in the area, but they had a lot of dear friends. Beloved bakery patrons, old schoolteachers, and anyone else who they loved that didn’t have their own place to go for the holiday would come to the Mellarks’ for the meal or even just to make an appearance. It was lively and loud as music drifted between conversations, and Peeta had always loved the energy of it. It was full of love and thankfulness, just as Thanksgiving should be.

     The most talked-about part of Mellark Thanksgivings, though, was the food. With the help of his sons, Mr. Mellark churned out a massive turkey, along with pans of stuffing, pots of gravy, mounds of mashed potatoes. There were sauces, casseroles, and cornbread. For dessert, there were at least four different kinds of pie—though one year, they had made seven flavors, which everyone had decided was a little overboard.

     And, of course, there were cheese buns. When Peeta had invited Katniss to spend Thanksgiving with them, he had made sure to include this detail—later, she jokingly claimed it was the only reason she had decided to come.

     Now, Katniss was playing cards at the table with Delly, Peeta’s twin cousins that went to a university in the area, and Brady, the guy Cap had brought from school that he swore was just a friend even though they tended to sit suspiciously close when they were together. Peeta could see them all from the kitchen, where his hands were submerged in soapy water as he helped his father and brothers clean up after dessert.

     “Kitty Kat,” Finnick said, poking his head into the dining room. “Grandma and I are leaving, and I’m taking Annie home, too. Are you staying?”

     “Yes,” she said. “I’ll make Peeta drive me home later or something. See you.”

     “You’ll make me?” Peeta called from his place at the sink.

     “Okay, let me rephrase,” she said, turning her head to lock eyes with Peeta. “Peeta will offer to drive me home later.”  
     Finnick laughed, crossing the room to pat the top of Katniss’s head lovingly. She kicked his leg, and he laughed harder. Then, he was waving goodbye to the Mellarks and disappearing into the living room; from there Peeta could hear the front door open and close as Finnick, Annie, and Grandma Mags left for the evening.

     “Little brothers can be such dummies,” Katniss muttered, but she was grinning widely as she said it.

     “But we love them anyway,” said Cap, clasping Peeta’s shoulder with the hand that wasn’t holding a dirty rag.

     “He really does seem like a good brother, you know,” said Delly, picking through her hand of cards. “He never really talked about you much, but when you’re hanging out together anyone could tell he adores you.”

     “Yeah,” Katniss said, nodding. She was smiling, still, but more pensively. “He’s my best friend. After, um, our mom died, we were separate for years and it was unbelievable how much I missed him, you know?”

     Peeta knew that Finnick and Katniss were not siblings in the same sense that he and Cap and Walden were—they had not really shared a mother; they did not really share genetics. Technically, there was no relation between them but their roles as Guardians, but to Katniss, Finnick was more like family than any other angel she’d ever known. Especially now.

     Apparently, this was uncommon. Angelic families were camaraderie and loyalty, but not love and attachment. But the way Katniss described her life, it seemed like everything she did was uncommon compared to other angels. She had been fiercely involved in Prim’s life, had grieved so deeply after her death. She had grown to love Peeta, despite the fact that it was taboo. So Finnick’s status as brother over colleague, best friend over peer, was not a surprise—it was just the Katniss way.

     Peeta washed the last dish and rinsed the soap suds off of his wet and wrinkled fingertips. Katniss put down her last card, and Brady called bullshit—but it had not been bullshit. Peeta sat down beside her at the table as Delly collected all of the cards in order to reshuffle.

     “Congrats on your win, angel,” he said, pressing a kiss to Katniss’s cheek.

     “You want me to deal you in, Peeta?” asked Delly.

      “I don’t know, do you want to lose again?” he replied, and Katniss laughed brightly. “Oh, you think that’s funny? I’ll destroy you, Katniss—your winning streak ends now.”

     “We’ll see about that, Mellark.”

      Of course, she won again, proving that she was the one that would destroy him. And he would let her—in fact, he’d walk straight into the fire.

     As this year’s Mellark Thanksgiving came to a close, Peeta sat on his back porch steps, Katniss huddled in the crook of his arm. The house was warm and lit behind them, but he was all right with sitting in the cold, wrapped up in her. He closed his eyes and leaned his head against hers, and even though at this moment it was not loud and cramped like the Thanksgiving he’d always known, this felt like Thanksgiving too.

     Mellark Thanksgivings were many things, indeed, but above all they were about love.

 ****

Katniss felt Peeta relax against her—if not for the way his thumb rubbed little circles against her hand, she would have thought he’d fallen asleep. Not that she would’ve minded that, either—it would have been adorable.

     In the dead and dying light, the trees that pressed up against the edge of the Mellark’s backyard looked like spindly monsters, their leaves having mostly collected on the lawn. The moon was bright, though, and she could see a few stars sprinkled across the sky. Everything about this moment was beautiful—the sky and stars, the autumn chill, and Peeta, warm and solid and smelling like pumpkin pie spice beside her.

     Beneath the shadows of the trees, something crunched through the leaves. She caught a glimpse of movement, and thought maybe it was an animal, until the figure stepped closer to the light. She could make out his face, then his hair, then the shape of his wings against the night.

     Gale didn’t say anything, he just watched them—Katniss wasn’t even sure if he knew he’d been spotted. But then, Gale would not be so careless. He had been trained to evade notice and he would never be seen if he didn’t mean to be.

     “Peeta,” she whispered, shifting and wiggling out of his grasp. “Could you get us some cider or hot chocolate or something? I’m starting to get kind of cold.”

     “Sure, no problem,” he said. Peeta kissed her nose and hauled himself up, trudging inside. She could hear him talking to someone, but the sound grew more distant as she got up and trod across the leaf-covered yard.

     “What are you doing here?” she asked.

     “I’m not sure. I just…I knew today was their Thanksgiving,” he said. “And I wanted to wish you a happy holiday.”

     “It’s a lot of people’s Thanksgiving,” said Katniss. “Not just Peeta’s.”

     “Right.”

     “Why go out of your way, though, Gale? Why come here to say ‘Happy Thanksgiving’ to me, the _disgrace_? The, _stubborn_ , _bleeding-heart_ , _nincompoop_ that I am?”

     “I didn’t call you a nincompoop, did I?” he asked, slightly amused.

     “Well yeah, you did. I mean I don’t have a transcript of the conversation,” Katniss snapped, “But you did call me all of those things and more. You attacked my intelligence and my character, and if you’re here to mock my Thanksgiving then I will have none of it.”

      “I didn’t come to mock you,” he said, the slight smile disappearing from his face. “I came to say I’m sorry. I’m sorry, and…I was wrong.”

     She stared at him, unsure what to say. She wasn’t even sure she was actually hearing what she was hearing.

      “Do you remember Cressida? She was one of our human studies teachers—she had all kinds of documentary videos and stuff about them. Anyway, I saw her a few days ago…she was at the scene of a demonic event. It was a restaurant fire, but these little bastards caused it. They were covered in flames and crawling all up the walls,” Gale shook his head—he was getting off track. “Cressida went in there with us, wouldn’t take no for an answer, and when we found this guy holed up in the freezer she…she looked like she’d never let go of him. Later, I found out they were married with two sons. She had a video on her phone of them playing with bubbles, and I watched it six times.

     “I thought I knew what family was and what it was always supposed to be. I. But her family? It was beautiful. It was happy. It was different from everything I understand—but it was still good.”

     “So…?” Katniss prompted.

     “So, I was wrong. It shouldn’t matter if you’re with a human or an angel or no one at all, as long as you’re happy,” he said. “I’m sorry. It always should have been about your happiness, and not my grudge.”

     “Thank you,” she said. “I am happy.”

     “Yeah. Now, um, he’s waiting for you.” Gale nodded towards the house. Katniss turned and saw Peeta standing on his porch, two steaming mugs in his hands. “Go be happy.”

     She turned towards Peeta, and heard Gale crunch through the leaves and back into the shadows.

     When she joined him on the steps and accepted her cup of hot chocolate, Peeta smiled.

     “I knew he was there,” he said. “I saw him when you pulled away from me. You didn’t have to send me off to hide your bulky angel friend. Was that Gale? He looked like how I’d imagine Gale.”

     “Yeah. It was better for us to talk in private, anyway,” she said, lowering herself to sit on the step again. “He wanted to say he was sorry. And Happy Thanksgiving.”      

     Peeta sat beside her and sipped his hot chocolate. When he looked at her, she worried she might find worry in his eyes, or perhaps lingering resentment towards Gale. But all she saw was happiness, and that was what mattered.

     “Happy Thanksgiving indeed,” said Peeta, staring off into the trees where Gale had disappeared.


	10. Chapter 10

**Chapter Ten**

_"Not all heroes wear capes. Not all angels have wings."_

* * *

 

 

The bakery opened late most Sunday mornings, so Peeta got to sleep through the sunrise—now the beams of light caught in the crystalline frost formations on his windowpanes. Still wrapped in his blankets, he walked up to the window, peering out at the spot between the trees where Gale and Katniss had stood only days before.

     He thought maybe the uncanny visit should bother him, but it didn’t. Katniss had been so pleased to know that Gale had seen the error of his ways, and Peeta was glad that she was glad.

     With a yawn, Peeta closed his window tightly—he could not sleep if it was not open just a crack—and went to get dressed. As he made his way to the closet, he dropped his blankets off at his bed and shivered against the chill that greeted his bare arms and legs. Foolishly, he’d worn only a t-shirt and boxers to bed.

     Peeta hurried to pull on a pair of jeans and a warm green sweater that Katniss had stolen from him once, a few weeks ago, when he’d taken it off as he worked in the kitchen. He hadn’t really washed it since, because it was a bulky knit and could survive a few more wears, so it still smelled faintly like her. Like cleaning fluid and the fruity shampoo she used and like the flour that would drift from his hair and hands and settle on her shoulders when they hugged.

     Peeta held the fabric to his face and inhaled, feeling warmth spread throughout his insides while the chill of the coming winter still bit at his skin. It was a decidedly wonderful feeling.

     Downstairs, the griddle was laden with circles of pancake batter and bacon sizzled on the stovetop. Mr. Mellark kept an eye on both, his multi-tasking skills well-honed for this particular purpose. In the dining room, Cap was taking down Thanksgiving decorations and his new college friend Brady was helping him pack them into boxes. In the living room, the Christmas boxes were already waiting to be unpacked for the season.

     Mellark Christmases were much softer than Mellark Thanksgivings, and Peeta loved them. He couldn’t wait to show Katniss the rosy hue the living room took on in the light of their Christmas tree, the scent of peppermint that lingered everywhere, and the hush that fell over the room when they could hear carolers down the street.

     Soon enough, the pancakes were stacked on a platter in the center of the table, the bacon on a plate right beside them. Between the three boys in the dining room, the food was bathed in syrup and shoveled away very quickly, leaving just enough for Mr. Mellark to have his two of everything—two pancakes, two slices of bacon, and two cups of extremely sugary coffee.

     And like the well-oiled machine that they were, the Mellarks set to cleaning up—Brady didn’t fit seamlessly into the operation, but he offered to wipe the table down, and that was good enough. Once all of the dishes were washed, dried, and returned to their homes in the cabinets, the four of them grabbed what they needed and filed out the front door.

     Brady and Cap piled into Brady’s rusty yellow two-door, after tossing their bags into the trunk. Peeta and his father slid into the front seat of the minivan. One car turned to drive further into town, towards Undersee Ave and Main Street, where the bakery waited to open. The other veered in the opposite direction, headed towards the highway out of town—Peeta watched them disappear in the rearview mirror and sighed, knowing it was the last time he would see Cap in person until the semester was over and Christmas was in full swing.

     When they arrived at the bakery, it was 7:15. Peeta climbed out of the car and jogged ahead, catching the keys when his father tossed them his way. He reached the door and unlocked it, holding it open for his dad as he came through, holding a stack of papers close to his body as if to protect them from the cold.

     “What are those?” Peeta asked, locking the door behind them.

     “Recipes I’ve been meaning to bring in. They’re mostly just ideas, basic framework and stuff. I came up with one of them in the middle of the night, if you’ll believe it.” Mr. Mellark looked down at his bundle of paper scraps, fishing through them with his free hand. He pulled out one that was written on a piece of cardboard that looked like it had once been the side of a tissue box.

     “I’ll believe it.”

     “Here, let’s take a sec to look through them,” he said, dumping them onto the nearest table. Peeta eyed him with something between amusement and bewilderment, but slid into the booth opposite his father anyway and began to sift through the papers.

     Some of the ideas were nothing more than that—a concept. Others had more detailed instructions and descriptions. One made Peeta nauseous, and he took it upon himself to get up and toss it in a trash can before his father could stop him.

     And then he found the slightly rumpled recipe card with cookies and pies printed around the edges. The handwriting was faded, but unmistakable. His mother had not been one to create recipes, but she loved to steal them and use them later. She’d copied this one from one of her own mother’s recipe cards, and Peeta remembered the way the kitchen smelled of very, very burnt sugar for days after she’d tried it.

     “Peppermint crème brûlée,” Peeta said.

     His father gently took the recipe card from his hand and looked at it. For a moment, he held it to his heart and closed his eyes before putting it in the pile of ideas they had decided to keep for the bakery.

     Peeta didn’t say anything else about it.

     His father left him a few minutes later to start baking for the day. He trusted Peeta to finish sorting through the recipe ideas and to file them accordingly in the back office when he was done.

     Delly came in at 7:30, wrapped up in her fluffy winter coat and a woolen scarf. Peeta did not think it was that cold, but then, Delly had always preferred the heat of the summer. The more it smothered, the better, according to her.

     Peeta got up to put all of the recipes away, and when he came out again, Walden was shuffling around the bakery pulling chairs off of the tables. He looked like he’d just woken up, and Peeta realized that he probably had—usually, what woke him was the jingling bells and clanging pans and general noisiness that arose when Peeta and his father arrived in the morning.

     When the bells of the clock in the square started ringing again, Peeta picked up the two coffees Delly had poured for him and went to a table by the door to wait for Katniss. She was usually a little behind schedule, and it didn’t bother Peeta, but he still wondered why—she never slept, so it wasn’t because she slept in. She didn’t really need to spend time getting ready, didn’t really need to walk or catch a ride, and sometimes she didn’t.

     Peeta didn’t mind, and he didn’t take it personally. It was just the way she was.  Time meant something a little different to Katniss. 

     He waited, checked the clock, and waited longer. It was 8:15 when Walden dropped a tray of doughnuts with a loud clatter and Peeta rushed to help him pick them up and throw them away. It was 8:25 when someone called ahead for an order they would be in to pick up within the next hour.  It was 8:30 when Peeta flipped the CLOSED sign to OPEN and stood in the doorway for a second to see if Katniss would appear across the street.

     She was always a little late, and occasionally very late if she had something she had to do—but usually, she would tell him first. His inbox was empty save for a sad face from Cap as he and Brady drove away from Panem City.  She had not called the bakery to let them know she’d be late or absent.

     It was only thirty minutes, so he tried not to worry too much.

     But thirty minutes became an hour, and an hour became two. The phone didn’t ring, she didn’t text him back, and according to Finnick, she wasn’t even at home.

     Peeta felt his heart sink into the wet cement of dread that filled his stomach. Before he could make a scene in the middle of the bakery, he ducked into the office and sunk into one of the folding chairs set up in front of the desk.

     Katniss had told him they had months left. She had told him not to worry that she would disappear, because she wasn’t going anywhere until next September, which felt like eons away.

    He was sure she hadn’t meant to tell him untruths—that wasn’t the source of his panic, or his hurt. It was simply the possibility that Katniss was gone. He loved her, and she was gone.

     “You don’t know what day it is, do you?” asked Walden, appearing at Peeta’s side.  

     “It’s Sunday.”

     “It’s November twenty-sixth. I guess there’s no reason you should remember,” Walden said, pushing his sleeves up to his elbows and crossing his arms. At first glance, he was detached from the conversation, but Peeta noted the way his fingers tapped against his upper arm and the way his eyes were focused intently on him.

     “We don’t all have your bizarre memory,” said Peeta. “What am I missing?”

     “On November twenty-sixth last year, you and I delivered a birthday cake to one Primrose Everdeen. You decorated it with tons of flowers because you knew she liked them, because she was in your art class.” Walden closed his eyes for a brief moment, determined to hide the sorrow that had leaked into the memory. But Peeta knew him well enough to see it anyway. “She would be sixteen today.”

     In seconds, Peeta was back on his feet, one hand wiping away a stray tear and the other scrolling through his phone to find Finnick’s number again. He picked up right away.

     “It’s Prim’s birthday,” said Peeta, gathering up his jacket. He poked his head into the kitchen and mouthed _I’m leaving_ at his father, who nodded and motioned for him to go. And he did, walking briskly through the bakery and out the front door. “I completely forgot, Finn. I should’ve known.”

     “Katniss doesn’t expect you to know that,” Finnick said. “I’m on my way out the door—do you think you know where she is?”

     “I’m not sure. But should we just give her space?” Peeta was unsure if this was something he really should dig his hands into. Finnick knew her better, and he better understood the significance of the day Prim was born.

     “Hell no. She’s been gone twelve hours,” he said. “I heard her leave last night, and she just never came home. If she needs space she can have it, but it will be here, where it’s fucking warm and safe. Are you at the bakery? I’ll pick you up.”

     Finnick hung up, probably because he had reached his car and was now getting ready to join Peeta to search for Katniss, and he knew that they would both stop at nothing to find her. Knowing she wasn’t gone was a partial relief, but worry still infested Peeta’s entire body—now, however, there was something he could do about it. He could find her.

****    

Peeta and Finnick went to Prim’s grave first, finding fresh flowers laid on the frost-tipped grass. But Katniss was not there, curled over the spot where they’d buried her purpose.

     Next, they drove up to the Everdeens’ apartment complex. Finnick went in alone, unseen, to see if Katniss had returned to her old home. She was not there, drinking in the details of the place Prim had _lived_ , trying to see if she could still feel her.

     The spot on the highway where their car had crashed. Katniss was not there.

     The school, the library, the museum. Katniss wasn’t there.

     They scoured the park and half of the stores on Main and Prim’s favorite restaurant. She wasn’t anywhere.

     And then, they passed the movie theater, and Peeta told Finnick where to drive.

****

The cinema in the neighboring town was much bigger than the one in Panem City, with twenty auditoriums instead of seven. But there was only one that was empty that day, that wasn’t screening any movie or holding a church service or hosting an inspirational seminar.

     Peeta left Finnick in the hall and walked into the darkened theater. The massive screen was flat and dark against the wall, and mere pinpricks of light lined the stairs that climbed up into the rows of seats.

     But despite the darkness, he could still make out the shape of a person huddled in a chair in the middle of the row, several rows up.  It was well past noon now, and Peeta and Finnick had been looking for her for hours—here she was, alone in a movie theater, and for all Peeta knew she had been there the whole time.

     Katniss didn’t turn her head as Peeta ascended the steps, and didn’t acknowledge him when he settled into the seat beside her.

     After a few minutes of sitting there in silence, staring ahead at the blank movie screen, she spoke. She still wasn’t looking at him, but she spoke.

     “We were going to the movies that day,” she said.

     “I know.” He had heard the story several times over—from the newspapers, first, and then in more accurate detail from Katniss in the quiet stillness of the bakery after it closed for the night.  

     “The movie we were going to see is out on DVD now. Will you watch it with me?”

     “Yes,” he said. “I will.”

     She reached for his hand, folding her fingers into the spaces between his. She sighed softly at the contact, as if just touching him, just holding her hand, made it feel a little better.

     Maybe it did. He hoped it did.

     “Are you ready to go home?” he asked her.

     She looked at him, finally, and nodded. Peeta helped her to her feet, and together they walked out of the movie theater and into the blinding afternoon. He sat in the backseat of Finnick’s car with her, Katniss buckled into the middle seat and Peeta on the passenger side.

     She closed her eyes and leaned against him for the entire drive home. When they reached Grandma Mags’s house, Peeta shifted, thinking she would open her eyes and climb out with him. She didn’t—she let out a breathy sigh and stirred against him.

     “Finn, is she…?” he asked as Finnick pulled into the driveway.

     “Is she what? Asleep?” Finnick shifted into park before looking over his shoulder at the two of them huddled in the backseat. “Looks like it. I can carry her in if you can’t.”

     “I can. But I thought you didn’t sleep?”

     “I do. Katniss usually doesn’t,” he said, unbuckling his seat belt and opening the door to get out of the car. “But sometimes…sometimes you just need to sleep. After hundreds of years without it, you can’t blame her for dozing off on the way home, can you?”

     Peeta gently reached to unfasten her seatbelt, and then wedged his hand between them to find the buckle of his own. She mumbled something in her sleep as he carefully got out of the car, then eased her body out and into his arms.

     Mags was at the door, pushing it open for them as they approached.

     “Thank heavens you found her,” she said, the relief in her voice palpable.

     “She would’ve come back,” said Peeta. “It just would have taken her a while without our help.”

     He carried her through the house and nudged her bedroom door open with his foot. When he laid her down on her bed, his aching shoulders and arms cheered, but he was not so happy to let her go. He was terrified to leave her, terrified she’d go away again—even though logically, he knew she wouldn’t.

     Peeta removed Katniss’s shows and pulled her covers up over her shoulders. He stepped back, away from her bed, and watched her get comfortable.

     “Peeta,” she whispered, her eyes fluttering. She reached towards him, and he stumbled forward to take her hand in his. She tugged, weakly, sleepily, but he got the point. He kicked off his shoes and dropped his jacket on the floor and let her pull him down to the mattress. She draped her blankets over him and breathed against his neck, “Peeta, stay with me.”

     “Always.”


End file.
